London, Sep 15 (Inditop.com) Researchers in Italy have discovered that both the left and the right hemisphere of the brain are used to understand idioms.
Alice Proverbio from the University of Milano-Bicocca and colleagues used an electro-physiological analysis to investigate the role of the two cerebral hemispheres in idiom comprehension.
By analyzing the brain activity of students, they found that idiomatic sentences activated both sides of the brain.
All phrases were matched for length and familiarity, yet the students took longer to associate an idiomatic phrase with a linked word than to associate a literal phrase with its linked word.
This suggests that idioms are more difficult to understand and denote superior levels of language use and processing. The findings also shed light on whether the brain tries to understand a familiar idiom literally, before it understands it as a metaphor.
“Though the interpretation of language involves widespread activation bilaterally, the right hemisphere has a special role in the comprehension of idiomatic meaning,” Proverbio concludes.
These findings were published in the journal BMC Neuroscience.
