Brain and Language 100 (2007) 142–149

www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l

Laterality in metaphor processing: Lack of evidence from functional

magnetic resonance imaging for the right hemisphere theory
Alexander M. Rapp a,b,¤, Dirk T. Leube b,c, Michael Erb b,
Wolfgang Grodd b, Tilo T.J. Kircher c
a
Department of Psychiatry, University of Tuebingen, Osianderstrasse 24, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany
b
Section Experimental MR of the CNS, Department of Neuroradiology, University of Tuebingen, Hoppe-Seyler-Str. 3, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany
c
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstr. 30, D-52074 Aachen, Germany

Accepted 4 April 2006

Available online 4 May 2006

Abstract

We investigated processing of metaphoric sentences using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Seventeen
healthy subjects (6 female, 11 male) read 60 novel short German sentence pairs with either metaphoric or literal meaning and performed
two diVerent tasks: judging the metaphoric content and judging whether the sentence has a positive or negative connotation. Laterality
indices for 8 regions of interest were calculated: Inferior frontal gyrus (opercular part and triangular part), superior, middle, and inferior
temporal gyrus, precuneus, temporal pole, and hippocampus. A left lateralised network was activated with no signiWcant diVerences in lat-
erality between the two tasks. The lowest degree of laterality was found in the temporal pole. Other factors than metaphoricity per se
might trigger right hemisphere recruitment. Results are discussed in the context of lesion and hemiWeld studies.
© 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Language lateralisation; Metaphor nonliteral language; fMRI; Right hemisphere; Laterality; Schizophrenia; Metaphoric language; Proverb

1. Introduction Although metaphor and proverb comprehension skills are

tested routinely in psychiatry, the contribution of the two
Metaphoric language is a ubiquitous part of everyday cerebral hemispheres to their comprehension is not yet
communication, not just a poetic device (Gibbs, 1994). The understood (Papagno & Carporali, 2007).
neural basis behind the process of understanding a meta- During the last decade, enormous progress has been
phor is thereby a relevant topic for our understanding of made in knowledge on hemispheric lateralisation of both
the neuroanatomy of language comprehension. In addition, literal and non-literal language processing. It is now clear
metaphor, and proverb comprehension are of clinical rele- that both hemispheres contribute to language processing
vance in neuropsychiatry. For instance, patients with disor- when more complex processes such as whole sentences and
ders like schizophrenia and autism have a deWcit in texts come into play (Beeman, 1993; Kircher, Brammer,
comprehending metaphors and assessing the meaning of Tous-Andreu, Williams, & McGuire, 2001; Bookheimer,
proverbs. There is some evidence that disturbed lateralisa- 2002; Xu, Kemeny, Park, Frattali, & Braun, 2005).
tion processes may play a role in the pathophysiology of Recent consensus has been that the right cerebral hemi-
these disorders (Mitchell & Crow, 2005; Kircher et al., sphere plays a key role especially during processing of
2004; Sommer, Ramsey, Kahn, Aleman, & Bouma, 2001). non-literal language and during processing of complex
linguistic speech forms like humor, irony, sarcasm, meta-
phors, and proverbs (Burgess & Chiarello, 1996; Coulson
*
Corresponding author. Fax: +497071 29 4141. & Wu, 2005; Mitchell & Crow, 2005). For metaphors,
E-mail address: [email protected] (A.M. Rapp). this is referred to as the “right hemisphere theory” of

0093-934X/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2006.04.004
 A.M. Rapp et al. / Brain and Language 100 (2007) 142–149 143

metaphor processing. One strong version of this theory between anomalous metaphors and literal sentences were
predicts that metaphors are predominantly processed by quite large and involved bilateral activation.
the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere theory is Further evidence from functional imaging against the
mainly based on studies with patients who suVer from right hemisphere theory of metaphor processing comes
right cerebral hemisphere lesions, on hemiWeld investiga- from a previous investigation carried out by our group.
tions (Anaki, Faust, & Kravetz, 1998), and on research Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imag-
with positron emission tomography (Bottini et al., 1994). ing, we directly compared brain activation during process-
Patients with right hemisphere damage have diYculties in ing of metaphoric and carefully matched literal control
understanding humorous expressions (Gardner, Ling, sentences (Rapp, Leube, Erb, Grodd, & Kircher, 2004).
Flamm, & Silverman, 1975, see Wild, Rodden, Grodd, & DiVerence contrast between metaphoric > literal sentences
Ruch, 2003) and non-literal language (Brownell, Simpson, revealed activation in a left lateralised network including
Bihrle, Potter, & Gardner, 1990). the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left temporal lobe, but
However, recent research has questioned the speciWty of no signiWcant diVerences in right hemisphere homologues.
some of these results for the right cerebral hemisphere, This Wnding is in contrast to a positron emission tomogra-
especially in the case of metaphor comprehension and phy study on metaphor comprehension by Bottini et al.
idiom comprehension (Oliveri, Romero, & Papagno, 2004). (1994). However, Bottini et al.’s study investigated only 6
For example Zaidel, Kasher, Soroker, and Batori (2002) subjects and diVerences in the results of the two studies may
found such severe impairments also in left hemisphere dam- be well explained by methodological factors and stimulus
aged patients. Complementarily, right hemisphere damaged selection (Rapp et al., 2004).
patients had preserved metaphor comprehension skills and In the present study we used a less conservative analysis
lesion extent in the left, but not the right hemisphere corre- than in our previous investigation on metaphor compre-
lated with the ability to verbally explain the meaning of hension (Rapp et al., 2004). For the analysis presented in
metaphors (Giora, Zaidel, Soroker, Batori, & Kasher, this paper, we used a region-of-interest analysis and a more
2003). liberal threshold. We calculated laterality indices for several
Another methodology to investigate contribution of the regions of interest. The laterality index is a count between
cerebral hemispheres to metaphor comprehension is hemi- ¡1 and +1. (¡1 if only voxels in the left hemisphere are
Weld research. As in the lesion studies, data from hemiWeld activated and +1 if only voxels in the right hemisphere are
studies are heterogeneous: whereas a study using single activated). Calculating regional laterality indices from
word level suggested a right hemisphere advantage for fMRI data has shown a high correspondence with results
metaphor comprehension (Anaki et al., 1998), a study from from intracarotid amytal testing, the gold standard in
the same work group investigating processing of whole investigating language lateralisation (Spreer et al., 2002).
sentences did not (Faust & Weisper, 2000). The rationale behind this was as following: We predicted
Few studies have yet investigated metaphor comprehen- left lateralisation for metaphoric and for non-metaphoric
sion using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Two (literal) sentences. In addition, we investigated the inXuence
functional imaging studies investigated processing of meta- of the task performed by the subjects on language laterality.
phoric words (Mashal, Faust, Hendler, & Jung-Beeman, In our previous investigation, the task for the subjects dur-
2005; Lee & Dapretto, 2006). One of these studies found ing the experiment was to judge the connotation of the sen-
right hemisphere involvement (Mashal et al., 2005) whereas tences by pressing one of the two buttons with their right
the other did not (Lee & Dapretto, 2006). However process- index Wnger. However, judging the connotation of sentences
ing of single metaphoric words may represent a diVerent could possibly itself alter laterality during language pro-
cognitive task than processing phrasal metaphors. Note- cessing tasks. More speciWcally, the right hemisphere has
worthy, lateralisation eVects during processing of single been implicated as important both for ascertaining conno-
metaphoric words are diVerent from those of phrasal meta- tative meanings (Brownell, Potter, Michelow, & Gardner,
phors in previous investigations (Gagnon, Goulet, Giroux, 1984) and evaluating the emotional content of text (Borod,
& Joanette, 2003; Faust & Weisper, 2000). In addition, two Bloom, Brickman, Nakhutina, & Curko, 2002; Ferstl,
recent fMRI investigations (Ahrens et al., 2007; Stringaris, Rinck, & von Cramon, 2005). Our connotation judgement
Medford, Giampetro, Brammer, & David, 2007) investi- task could have balanced language lateralisation in favour
gated brain activation during comprehension of phrasal of the left hemisphere. In this paper, we present data from
metaphors. Stringaris et al. (2007) found diVerential activa- another experiment in which the same subjects pressed a
tion between metaphoric and literal sentences in the left button when deciding whether a sentence is metaphoric or
hemisphere thalamus and left inferior frontal gyrus. Only literal. Based on the results from our previous experiment,
small clusters of activation were found in the right cerebral we predicted left lateralised activation for metaphors and
hemisphere for both reading metaphors > literal sentences literal sentences in both tasks.
and the opposite contrast, reading literal sentences > meta- We investigated laterality indices for regions of interest
phors. In contrast, Ahrens et al. (2007) found a small diVer- that were activated in previous functional imaging studies
ence between conventional metaphors and literal sentences on metaphor comprehension (Bottini et al., 1994; Rapp
in the right inferior temporal gyrus, but the diVerences et al., 2004; Sotillo et al., 2005; Ahrens et al., 2007). More
144 A.M. Rapp et al. / Brain and Language 100 (2007) 142–149

speciWcally, we looked at the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex 2.3. Experimental task and procedure
(Rapp et al., 2004, Ahrens et al., 2007), the superior tempo-
ral gyrus (Bottini et al., 1994; Kircher, Leube, Erb, Grodd, During two diVerent tasks (each involving either “met-
& Rapp, 2006), the middle temporal gyrus (Sotillo et al., aphoricity judgements” or “connotation judgements”),
2005; Ahrens et al., 2007), the inferior temporal gyrus subjects were instructed to read all sentences silently and
(Rapp et al., 2004), the precuneus (Bottini et al., 1994; Kir- then to respond by pressing one of two buttons. In the
cher et al., 2006), the temporal pole (Rapp et al., 2004), and “metaphoricity” task, subjects had to decide whether the
the hippocampus. sentence had a metaphoric or a literal content. In the “con-
notation” task, they indicated whether the sentence had a
2. Materials and methods positive or negative connotation (for example the meta-
phoric sentence “die Worte des Liebhabers sind Harfenkla-
2.1. Subjects enge” [the lovers’ words are harp sounds] has a positive
connotation). During each of the two conditions, the sub-
Seventeen healthy, right handed (Annett, 1970) subjects jects saw one version of the sentence pairs (e.g., during the
(6 female, 11 male), all native German speakers, partici- connotation condition they saw the metaphoric one and
pated in the study. Mean age was 29.1 (SD: 8.9, range: 20– during the metaphoricity condition they saw the literal
52) years. Exclusion criteria were past or present medical or counterpart). This sequence was counterbalanced between
psychiatric illness or psychiatric illness in Wrst degree rela- the subjects. Both tasks were practiced in a training session
tives as well as impaired language skills (Lehrl, Triebig, & prior to the fMRI experiment with metaphors not used in
Fischer, 1995). Permission for the study was obtained from the experiment. During the Wllers presentations subjects
the local ethical committee. After complete description of rested without response.
the study, subjects gave their informed consent. During the fMRI scanning procedure, subjects lay
supine in the MR-scanner, their head being secured by
2.2. Experimental stimuli foam rubber to minimise movement artefacts. Sentences
were presented as whole sentences, visually on a translucent
A set of 260 short German sentences were initially cre- screen viewed by the subjects via a mirror, each sentence in
ated de novo for the experiment. Half of these sentences two lines with black letters on a grey background. A total
had a metaphoric meaning which was literally implausible. of 75 stimuli (30 metaphors, 30 literal sentences, 15 Wllers
Sentence pairs diVered only in their last one to three words (grey background without a sentence)) were presented
and had either a metaphoric (e.g., “Die Worte des Liebha- within each scanning session, each for 5 s with a 3-s inter-
bers sind Harfenklänge” [the lovers’ words are harp stimulus interval of blank screen. Stimuli were presented in
sounds]) or a literal (“Die Worte des Liebhabers sind a pseudo-randomized order and counterbalanced across
Lügen” [the lovers’ words are lies]) meaning. All stimulus subjects, so that subjects saw only one version of each sen-
sentences were simple statements (of the form “a” is a “b”). tence pair (metaphor or literal) during each task.
We chose this simple form of stimuli to exclude possible
confounding factors such as complex syntax processing. 2.4. Functional MRI acquisition
Prior to the study, 21 raters, who did not take part in the
fMRI experiment, rated each sentence on 6 point compre- Imaging was performed on a 1.5-T Scanner (Siemens,
hensibility (1 D completely absurd; 6 D highly meaningful), SONATA). Functional images were acquired with an echo-
metaphoricity, imageability, and sentence content (1 D very planar image sequence which is sensitive to BOLD-contrast
negative content; 6 D very positive content) scales. From (TE 40 ms, TR 2 s,  Xip angle D 90°). The measurement
the total pool, a set of 120 sentences (60 metaphors with sequence used “mosaic” images to allow fast data storing
their literal counterparts) were chosen as stimuli for the and handling (Klose, Erb, Wildgruber, Muller, & Grodd,
fMRI experiment. Post-hoc testing showed that 7 meta- 1999). The volume covered the whole brain with a 64¤64
phoric sentences out of the 60 used in the fMRI experiment matrix and 22 slices (voxel size 3¤3¤5 mm3); the slice thick-
occurred in a large corpus (Google). All stimuli scored > 3.5 ness was 5 mm with a 1 mm inter-slice gap. Two runs con-
in the comprehensibility rating (metaphors mean 4.57, SD sisting of 310 volumes were acquired during the experiment.
0.56, literal sentences mean 5.67, SD 0.26, p < 0.001, Mann- The Wrst eight volumes of each run were discarded to reach
U-Whitney-Test). There was a signiWcant diVerence in the steady state magnetisation. A trigger signal from the scan-
estimated imageability (metaphors 4.33, SD 0.57, literal sen- ner, the button presses of the subjects and the onset of the
tences 2.81, SD 0.87, p < 0.001, Mann-U-Whitney-Test) and stimuli were registered in a protocol together with the time-
metaphoricity (metaphors 5.39, SD 0.97, literal sentences line on a separate computer.
1.40, SD 0.78, p < 0.001, Mann-Whitney-U-Test), whereas
they were matched for tense (past or present), number of 2.5. Data analysis
words, word frequency of the last 3 words and positive con-
notation (metaphors 3.22, SD 0.79, literal sentences 3.76, Data analysis was performed with SPM 99 (Wellcome
SD 0.73, p D 0.13). Department of Cognitive Neurology, London). In a Wrst
 A.M. Rapp et al. / Brain and Language 100 (2007) 142–149 145

step of data analysis, the functional images of each subject calculated for each condition between the 17 subjects. Sta-
were corrected for motion and realigned by using the Wrst tistical signiWcance was assessed using student’s t-test at a
scan of the block as reference. T1 anatomical images were p D 0.05 level.
coregistered to the mean of the functional scans and spatial
normalized to the SPM T1 template in the MNI space. The 3. Results
same transformation was applied to normalize the func-
tional data. Finally, the functional images were smoothed Whole brain analysis of the “connotation” task from 15
with a 12 mm full-width, half-maximum (FWHM) Gauss- out of the 17 subjects of the current study has been pub-
ian Wlter. Model functions/time courses were calculated by lished previously (Rapp et al., 2004).
deWning SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony) from the proto- Reaction time was deWned as the time between the onset
col as events using a box car function (5 s) convolved with of the sentence and the button press of the subject. For the
the hemodynamic response function (hrf) to specify the metaphoricity judgement task, mean reaction time was
appropriate design matrix. Condition and subject eVects 2.27 s (SD 0.37) for the metaphoric sentences and 2.39 (SD
were estimated according to the general linear model at 0.40) for the literal sentences (p D 0.41). Accuracy of
each voxel in brain space. A high pass Wlter of 80 and a low response was 94.0% (SD 7.15, range 78–100%). For the con-
pass Wlter of 4 were used. SigniWcant signal changes for each notation judgement task, mean reaction time was 2.28 s (SD
subject and condition were assessed using t-statistics. For 0.44) for the metaphoric sentences and 2.11 (SD 0.39) for
each subject, diVerential contrasts were calculated between the literal sentences (p D 0.20). Accuracy of response was
metaphoric sentences and baseline as well as between literal 94.1% (SD 4.5, range 85–98%). DiVerences in reaction time
sentences and baseline. Results of reading each sentence between the metaphoricity and connotation task were not
type versus baseline showed robust activation mainly in the signiWcant.
visual cortex, the left hemisphere motor cortex and a left The results for the laterality indices for each task, sen-
lateralised network including the temporal lobes and pre- tence type and region are shown in Table 1.
frontal cortex in all the subjects in both tasks. The results
for group statistics and diVerential contrasts of the “conno- 4. Discussion
tation” task have been published previously (Rapp et al.,
2004). No signiWcant diVerences in laterality across literal and
For the second part of the analysis, eight regions of metaphoric stimuli were found in the regions of interest
interest were deWned using the automated anatomic label- under investigation. Relative to carefully matched literal
ling tool box (AAL) (Tzourio-Mazoyer et al., 2002). These control sentences, no signiWcant diVerences in laterality
regions were selected because of diVerential contrasts found were found in the superior temporal gyrus, the middle tem-
there in our previous investigation or in the literature on poral gyrus, the inferior temporal gyrus, the triangular and
neural correlates of metaphor processing. Regions of inter- the opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus, the precu-
est were: The inferior frontal gyrus (opercular part) (AAL: neus, the temporal pole, and the hippocampus.
F3O) (Rapp et al., 2004), the inferior frontal gyrus (triangu- Two diVerent tasks were used in our experiment, met-
lar part) (AAL: F3T) (Rapp et al., 2004; Ahrens et al., aphoricity judgement and connotation judgement. In
2007), the superior temporal gyrus (AAL: T1) (Bottini nearly all regions of interest, the fMRI activation was
et al., 1994), the middle temporal gyrus (AAL: T2) (Sotillo clearly left lateralised with only small group diVerences
et al., 2005), the inferior temporal gyrus (AAL: T3), the pre- between the two tasks. Marked diVerences in laterality
cuneus (AAL: PQ) (Bottini et al., 1994; Kircher et al., 2006), between diVerent tasks were found during metaphor com-
the temporal pole (middle temporal gyrus) (AAL: T2P) prehension in previous studies, for example, in the seminal
(Rapp et al., 2004), and the hippocampus (AAL: HIP). investigation by Winner and Gardner (1977), but only
After that, the laterality index was calculated. This was when pictorial probes were used. It is possible that both of
done by counting supra-threshold voxels in each hemi- our tasks bias processing demands in the cerebral hemi-
sphere (a threshold of P < 0.005 was used) and calculating a spheres towards the same direction. The lowest degree of
laterality index: (R¡L)/(L+R), where L is the number of cerebral lateralisation was found in the temporal pole.
suprathreshold voxels in the left hemisphere and R is the Whereas a moderate left-lateralisation was found during
number of suprathreshold voxels in the right hemisphere. connotation judgement in this region, there were more acti-
The result of this laterality index ranges between ¡1 and vated voxels during metaphoricity judgement of meta-
+1. A negative value indicates that more voxels are acti- phoric sentences in the right than in the left hemisphere.
vated in the left than in the right cerebral hemisphere. For However, this diVerence was not statistically signiWcant,
example, if only voxels in the left cerebral but no in the presumably because of the marked inter-individual diVer-
right hemisphere are activated, the index is ¡1. Four later- ence in hemispheric laterality between the subjects in our
ality indices were calculated for each subject and region of study. Large inter-subject diVerences in laterality indices
interest: for each of the two tasks (metaphoricity judgement have been constantly described in functional imaging stud-
and connotation judgement), one for reading of metaphors ies using laterality indices (see Ramsey, Sommer, Rutten, &
and one for reading of literal sentences. Mean values were Kahn, 2001). Little is known about the reasons of this large
146 A.M. Rapp et al. / Brain and Language 100 (2007) 142–149

variation and the cerebral regions in which they occur. In

Statistics Metaphoricity task vs connotation task (p value*)

fact, in some regions there was a clear left-lateralisation in

Mean values from data of 17 healthy subjects (threshold of p < 0.005). No signiWcant diVerence were evident between metaphoric and literal sentences in any of the above regions. (* student’s t-test).
some of the subjects, whereas others had right lateralised

Literal sentences
activation. Handedness is a factor that is associated with
the degree of language lateralisation (Sommer, Aleman,
Bouma, & Kahn, 2004), however handedness is no explana-
0.67
tion for the interindividual diVerences in our study, since all
0.94
0.99
0.69
0.77
0.53
0.51
0.47
subjects were carefully selected right-handers. Future
research should evaluate the reasons for the interindividual
diVerences in laterality among subjects.
Several factors may have confounded our result. One
critical point is whether the applied methodology—calcu-
Metaphoric sentences Literal sentences p value* Metaphoric sentences Literal sentences p value* Metaphoric sentences

lating laterality indices—is sensitive enough to detect the

diVerences between metaphoric and literal sentences. How-
ever, modiWcation of the threshold level did not change this
main result even at a very low signiWcance level of p < 0.01.
In addition, laterality indices sensitively detected diVerences
0.98
0.49
0.60
0.94
0.44
0.15
0.70
0.63

between tasks in previous investigations (see Ramsey et al.,

2001). Two recent functional imaging studies found signiW-
0.80
0.67
0.99
0.77
0.72
0.15
0.70
0.29

cant right hemisphere activation in metaphoric sentences

relative to literal stimuli (Bottini et al., 1994, Ahrens et al.,
¡0.57 (SD: 0.46)
¡0.39 (SD: 0.57)
¡0.42 (SD: 0.60)
¡0.54 (SD: 0.45)
¡0.39 (SD: 0.54)
¡0.06 (SD: 0.71)
¡0.46 (SD: 0.59)
¡0.06 (SD: 0.69)

2007). Ahrens et al. (2007) found right hemisphere activa-

tion for both salient and non-salient metaphoric sentences
relative to literal sentences, but their stimuli were not bal-
anced for syntax and diYculty. Bottini et al. (1994) used
more complex stimulus material. In contrast to these two
studies, the stimulus sentences in our investigation were
Connotation task

¡0.53 (SD: 0.46)

¡0.31 (SD: 0.47)
¡0.42 (SD: 0.68)
¡0.59 (SD: 0.48)
¡0.45 (SD: 0.48)
¡0.24 (SD: 0.60)
¡0.54 (SD: 0.47)
¡0.32 (SD: 0.50)

more similar to each other, as most of them had the form

“an a is a b”. Furthermore, these studies used a block
design, whereas in our study the sequence of the stimuli was
unforeseeable (event-related design, see Rapp et al., 2004).
Stringaris et al. (2007), using an event-related design and
similar stimuli like in our investigation found diVerences
0.86
0.90
0.59
0.86
0.12
0.20
0.52
0.46

between metaphoric and literal stimuli in the right cerebral

hemisphere, but they were not a speciWc eVect of metaphors
¡0.41 (SD: 0.48)
¡0.50 (SD: 0.48)
¡0.42 (SD: 0.67)
¡0.61 (SD: 0.48)
¡0.34 (SD: 0.42)
¡0.23 (SD: 0.81)
¡0.60 (SD: 0.44)
¡0.24 (SD: 0.64)

because right hemisphere diVerences were also found for

reading literal sentences > metaphoric sentences. Taken
together, the results from imaging studies are heteroge-
neous.
DiVerences in laterality may occur in regions that were
not under investigation in our study. However, we chose
Metaphoricity task

¡0.44 (SD: 0.56)

¡0.52 (SD: 0.58)
¡0.28 (SD: 0.73)
¡0.58 (SD: 0.57)
¡0.57 (SD: 0.45)

¡0.46 (SD: 0.63)

¡0.43 (SD: 0.63)
0.16 (SD: 0.85)

the regions of interest based on activations found in previ-

ous imaging studies in phrasal metaphor comprehension
(Bottini et al., 1994; Rapp et al., 2004; Sotillo et al., 2005;
Ahrens et al., 2007) and we had no hypothesis for regions
Laterality indices for eight regions of interest

apart from the ones under investigation in our study. Also,

Inferior frontal gyrus (triangular part)

the number of subjects was high and the stimuli were pre-
Inferior frontal gyrus (opercular part)

sented pseudo randomised in an event-related design, so it

is unlikely that diVerent processing strategies were used for
metaphoric and literal sentences within the tasks by the
Superior temporal gyrus

subjects in our experiment.

Inferior temporal gyrus
Middle temporal gyrus

One strong version of the right hemisphere theory pre-

dicts a “dichotomy” of hemispheres between literal and
Temporal pole
Hippocampus

nonliteral language. Based on our Wndings, we argue

Precuneus

against a strong hemispheric dichotomy between literal

Table 1

and nonliteral language. This view is compatible with the

results from divided visual Weld studies which suggest that
 A.M. Rapp et al. / Brain and Language 100 (2007) 142–149 147

both hemispheres have the ability to process metaphoric compare salient and non-salient metaphors. The meta-
meanings (Faust & Weisper, 2000; Schmidt, DeBuse, & phors used in our investigation were created de novo for
Seger, 2007; Kacinik & Chiarello, 2007). Our results are the experiment; however post hoc testing showed that 7
compatible with lesion studies on metaphor processing. out of the 60 metaphors used in our study occurred in
Patients with right-hemisphere lesions have preserved a large corpus (internet Google search). By this, our
ability to understand phrasal metaphors (Rinaldi, study included processing of salient as well as non-salient
Marangolo, & Baldassarri, 2004; Winner & Gardner, stimuli, although the majority of the metaphors were non-
1977). In a recent study by Giora et al. (2003), lesion salient. Future research is needed to speciWcally
extent in the left, but not the right cerebral hemisphere investigate the eVects of salience during metaphor com-
correlated with performance in explaining the meaning of prehension.
metaphors verbally (Giora et al., 2003; Zaidel et al., 2002). Besides scientiWc, hemispheric lateralisation during
The preserved ability of right hemisphere lesioned metaphor processing is also of clinical interest, since some
patients to understand metaphors correctly suggests that patient populations show altered metaphor comprehen-
the left hemisphere has the ability to process phrasal met- sion skills. These are for example patients with Asperger
aphors correctly. This is also supported by some recent Syndrome (Dennis, Lazenby, & Lockyer, 2001), subjects
hemiWeld research (Kacinik & Chiarello, 2007). Spence, with high expression of schizotypal personaity traits
Zaidel, and Kasher (1990) investigated performance on (Nunn & Peters, 2001; Langdon & Coltheart, 2004), and
the “right hemisphere communication battery” in four patients with schizophrenia (De-Bonis, Epelbaum, DeVez,
patients with complete commissurotomy As a group, the & Feline, 1997). Patients with schizophrenia show a
commissurotomy patients performed signiWcantly below marked tendency toward the literal meaning while pro-
normals on all tasks except verbal metaphor comprehen- cessing metaphors and proverbs (Gorham, 1956; Lang-
sion (Spence et al., 1990). don, Coltheart, Ward, & Catts, 2002). This phenomenon
In a recent study, Sotillo et al. (2005) used source-local- is referred to as schizophrenic “concretism”. Impaired
isation EEG algorithms to investigate neural activity metaphor and metonymy comprehension may play a role
associated with metaphor comprehension. More speciW- in the origin of delusions (Rhodes & Jakes, 2004). It has
cally, they investigated the N400 induced by words which been suggested that impaired lateralisation of cortical
were or were not metaphorically related to previously pre- activation during language processing plays a key role
sented metaphoric sentences. Source-localisation EEG in the pathophysiology of this deWcit (Kircher et al., 2006;
(LORETA analysis) for metaphorically related minus Kircher et al., 2001; Kircher et al., 2004; Langdon et al.,
unrelated words revealed a maximum of activation in the 2002). Thereby, clarifying the issue of laterality
right middle / superior temporal gyrus. This Wnding is in during metaphor comprehension may help to better
contrast to our Wndings, in which no right hemisphere understand the pathophysiology of the above named dis-
“shift” was found in this region. However, the priming orders.
paradigm used in the Sotillo et al. investigation may trig- In the scientiWc literature, metaphor comprehension is
ger right hemisphere contribution and this could possibly often mentioned as a “right hemisphere” language func-
explain the diVerence in laterality between the two studies. tion (Langdon & Coltheart, 2004; Xu et al., 2005; Bottini
Our study investigated metaphor comprehension without et al., 1994; Kircher et al., 2001; Mitchell & Crow, 2005).
a context, however semantic context could possibly inXu- Our study speciWcally addressed the issue of laterality
ence the underlying comprehension process (Giora et al., during metaphor comprehension. No signiWcant laterality
2003; Robertson et al., 2000). Other N400 investigations eVects could be demonstrated for metaphoric relative to
with metaphoric sentences used sentence ending para- literal sentences even at a liberal threshold in several
digms more similar to the task used in our study. They regions of interest in two diVerent tasks. We conclude
found no diVerence in the lateralisation between meta- from this that other factors than metaphoricity per se may
phoric and literal sentence endings (Coulson & Van-Pet- be signiWcant for right hemisphere involvement. This view
ten, 2002; Pynte, Besson, Robichon, & Poli, 1996). is compatible with other recent theories on metaphor
However, a serious limitation of the former study is the comprehension, which predict that right hemisphere con-
inclusion of left-handers among the participants. tributions to metaphor comprehension varies depending
Another factor that could possibly play a role in right on factors such as salience, novelty or semantic distance
hemisphere recruitment during metaphor comprehension (Giora et al., 2003; Kacinik & Chiarello, 2007). Future
is the stimulus material used. In our study, only short, investigations should systematically investigate the inXu-
simple sentences (an “a” is a “b”) were used and selection ence of these factors on laterality in nonliteral language
of stimulus material may play a role for right hemisphere processing.
recruitment (see Rapp et al., 2004). Several authors
recently claimed that the salience of metaphors might be Acknowledgments
the critical factor for right hemisphere recruitment of met-
aphoric expressions (see Giora et al., 2003). Our study was The authors would like to thank Tilo Kellermann and
not designed to address this issue speciWcally. We did not Christine Schulte for technical assistance.
148 A.M. Rapp et al. / Brain and Language 100 (2007) 142–149

Appendix A

Typical examples for stimuli used in the experiment

Metaphoric sentence Literal sentence
Der Kanarienvogel ist eine the canary is a tocsin Der Kanarienvogel ist ein the canary is a songbird
Alarmglocke Singvogel
Der Wecker ist ein Folterknecht the alarm clock is a torturer Der Wecker ist ein Elektrogerät the alarm clock is an electric appliance
Der Taxifahrer ist ein the cabdriver is a kamikaze Der Taxifahrer ist ein the cabdriver is a smuggler
KamikazeXieger Schmuggler
Die Worte des Liebhabers sind the lover’s words are harp sounds Die Worte des Liebhabers sind the lover’s words are lies
Harfenklänge Lügen
Lisas Lächeln ist ein lisa’s smile was a bouquet of Xowers Lisas Lächeln ist eine lisa’s smile was an authentication
Frühlingsstrauß Bestätigung
Der Chef war eine Planierraupe the director was a bulldozer Der Chef ist ein the director was a Wnancial expert
Wirtschaftsfachmann
Der Termin beim Direktorium war the meeting at the directory board Der Termin beim Direktorium the meeting at the directory board was
eine Kreuzigung was a cruciWxion war ein Mißerfolg a disappointment

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