Lexical olfaction recruits olfactory orbitofrontal cortex in metaphorical and literal contexts

Pomp, Jennifer and Bestgen, A.-K. and Schulze, P. and Mueller, C. and Citron, Francesca Maria Marina and Suchan, B. and Kuchinke, Lars (2018) Lexical olfaction recruits olfactory orbitofrontal cortex in metaphorical and literal contexts. Brain and Language, 179. pp. 11-21. ISSN 0093-934X

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Abstract

The investigation of specific lexical categories has substantially contributed to advancing our knowledge on how meaning is neurally represented. One sensory domain that has received particularly little attention is olfaction. This study aims to investigate the neural representation of lexical olfaction. In an fMRI experiment, participants read olfactory metaphors, their literal paraphrases, and literal olfactory sentences. Regions of interest were defined by a functional localizer run of odor processing. We observed activation in secondary olfactory areas during metaphorical and literal olfactory processing, thus extending previous findings to the novel source domain of olfaction. Previously reported enhanced activation in emotion-related areas due to metaphoricity could not be replicated. Finally, no primary olfactory cortex was found active during lexical olfaction processing. We suggest that this absence is due to olfactory hedonicity being crucial to understand the meaning of the current olfactory expressions. Consequently, the processing of olfactory hedonicity recruits secondary olfactory areas.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Brain and Language
Additional Information:
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Brain and Language. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Brain and Language, 179, 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2018.02.001
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3310
Subjects:
?? neural representationolfactionmetaphorfmrireadingembodimentlinguistics and languageexperimental and cognitive psychologycognitive neurosciencespeech and hearing ??
ID Code:
123471
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
23 Feb 2018 09:10
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
15 Jan 2024 00:14