Rohrer, Tim. “Image Schemata in the Brain. ” In From Perception to Meaning.pdf

* Image Schemata in the Brain Tim Rohrer rohrer @ (c) Tim Rohrer 2005 Final draft—check pagination of published version before quoting citation information: Rohrer, Tim. “Image Schemata in the Brain.” In From Percep tion to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics, Beate Hampe and Joe Grady, eds., Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005, pp. 165-196. ABSTRACT A focus on the brain as an organic biological entity that grows and de- velops as the organism does is a prerequisite to a neurally-plausible theory of how image schemata structure language. Convergent evidence from the cognitive neurosciences has begun to establish the neural basis of image schemata as dynamic activation patterns that are shared across the neural maps of the sensorimotor cortex. First, I discuss the numerous experimen- tal studies on normal subj ects that, coupled with recent neurological stud- ies of body-part language deficits in patients, have begun to establish that the sensorimotor cortices are crucial to the semantic comprehension of bodily action terms and sentences. Second, by tracing the cognitive and neural development of image schemata through both animal neuroanatomi- cal studies and human neuroimaging studies, I review the neurobiologically plausible bases for image schemata. I propose that Edelman’s theory of secondary neural repertoires is the likeliest process to account for how in- tegrative areas of the sensorimotor cortex can develop both sensorimotor and image schematic functions. Third, I assess the evidence from recent fMRI and ERP experiments showing that literal and metaphoric language stimuli activate areas of sensorimotor cortex consonant with the image schemata hypothesis. I conclude that these emerging bodies of evidence sho