Why does metaphor comprehension in patients with prefrontal cortex damage degrade, particularly when understanding abstract concepts?

💡 Explanation

Damage to the prefrontal cortex impairs higher-order cognitive functions, including the conceptual mapping mechanism required for understanding metaphors. Because metaphor comprehension relies on mapping abstract source domains to target domains, impaired mapping selectively affects abstract concepts; therefore, conceptual mapping deficits explain the degradation, rather than sensory overload, phonological processing, or memory reduction.

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