Looking at the brains behind figurative language—A quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies on metaphor, idiom, and irony processing

Abstract

A quantitative, coordinate-based meta-analysis combined data from 354 participants across 22 fMRI studies and one positron emission tomography (PET) study to identify the differences in neural correlates of figurative and literal language processing, and to investigate the role of the right hemisphere (RH) in figurative language processing. Studies that reported peak activations in standard space contrasting figurative vs. literal language processing at whole brain level in healthy adults were included. The left and right IFG, large parts of the left temporal lobe, the bilateral medial frontal gyri (medFG) and an area around the left amygdala emerged for figurative language processing across studies. Conditions requiring exclusively literal language processing did not activate any selective regions in most of the cases, but if so they activated the cuneus/precuneus, right MFG and the right IPL. No general RH advantage for metaphor processing could be found. On the contrary, significant clusters of activation for metaphor conditions were mostly lateralized to the left hemisphere (LH). Subgroup comparisons between experiments on metaphors, idioms, and irony/sarcasm revealed shared activations in left frontotemporal regions for idiom and metaphor processing. Irony/sarcasm processing was correlated with activations in midline structures such as the medFG, ACC and cuneus/precuneus. To test the graded salience hypothesis (GSH, Giora, 1997), novel metaphors were contrasted against conventional metaphors. In line with the GSH, RH involvement was found for novel metaphors only. Here we show that more analytic, semantic processes are involved in metaphor comprehension, whereas irony/sarcasm comprehension involves theory of mind processes.