Neural correlates of Chinese taste metaphor processing

Abstract

Taste metaphors, such as “bitter truth”, are a common form of figurative language used in everyday life. It has been demonstrated that emotional valence influences metaphor processing. While Chinese is rich in taste-related expressions, studies exploring the neural correlates of taste metaphor processing in Chinese are limited. To address these questions, we enrolled 27 participants who read positive and negative taste metaphor sentences, synonymous literal sentences, and taste literal sentences during fMRI scanning. The results showed that: (a) in the contrast between taste metaphors and literal expressions, heightened activation was observed in the frontal-occipital-parietal brain regions (i.e., the middle frontal gyrus, left middle occipital gyrus and bilateral precuneus), confirming the involvement of these areas in metaphorical language comprehension; (b) taste metaphors exhibited increased functional connectivity within taste-related regions (i.e., including the parietal operculum and anterior cingulate gyrus) compared to synonymous literal sentences, and enhanced connectivity between taste-related (i.e., insula) and metaphor-processing brain regions (i.e., inferior frontal gyrus) compared with taste literal sentences; (c) compared to taste literal sentences, negative taste metaphors activated a broad network including the precuneus and cingulate cortex, while positive metaphors engaged the left angular gyrus. These findings suggested a unique neural signature for processing taste metaphors in Chinese, which was influenced by emotional valence and supported the embodied cognition framework.