ABC Brain Day
On June 1st the Amsterdam Brain and Cognition center organizes the ABC Brain Day, the yearly conference where ABC members present their research. During this conference, Gerard Steen will give a talk from 14.15 – 14.30.
The ceremony of the Creative Mind Prize will also take place during the Brain Day and will be presented by comic and initiator Freek de Jonge. Another good reason to mark this special date in your agenda!
Location: De Brakke Grond, Nes 45 in Amsterdam
You can register online!
Program
11.00 – 11.30 Coffee and welcome by ABC board
11.30 – 11.45 Jan Willem de Gee (PSY)
11.45 – 12.00 Mael Lebreton (FEB)
12.00 – 12.15 Pralle Kriengwatana (FGW)
12.15 – 12.30 Michiel van Elk (PSYI)
12.30 – 14.00 Food for Brain and Body: posters and lunch
14.00 – 14.15 Renée Visser (PSY)
14.15 – 14.30 Gerard Steen (FGW/ILLC)
Abstract
Since 1980, metaphor has figured large on the agenda of cognitive-scientific researchers: instead of a decorative poetic or rhetorical figure of speech, it was reconceptualized as a fundamental figure of thought that people need to think about all kinds of abstract and complex and vaguely defined phenomena: we think of organizations as plants that can grow or be pruned, we think of ideas as food that can be swallowed and need to be digested, and we think of urgent research programs or policies as if they are wars (on cancer, on drugs). There is a phenomenal amount of research across a wide range of disciplines that looks at the relation between metaphor expressed in various ways (in language, in gesture, in visuals, etc.) on the one hand and associated conceptual structures and systems on the other. Much of this research has looked at cognitive processes in experimental psychological research, in psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and communication science. In the past decade, these cognitive findings have got applied in neuro-scientific research exploring relations between metaphor and the brain: for instance, when metaphors in utterances are processed by readers, do they activate both the original conceptual domains of the metaphor (grow, prune, swallow, digest, war) as well as their intended figurative targets (organizations, ideas, policies).
In this talk I will briefly present each of these aspects in order to suggest the importance of metaphor for the ABC program: if metaphors are the powerful and unconscious conceptual tools and framing devices they have been made out to be, then it should be possible to demonstrate that metaphorical cognition in fact proceeds from the original source to the intended target, presumably constraining people’s experience of the target in highly specific ways. In our group we argue that this story is too simple and needs refinement with reference to different types of metaphor and different types of metaphor use. This requires an extended model for metaphor which should also be developed and tested in brain and cognition research, as I will briefly suggest.
14.30 – 14.45 Ruth van Holst (AMC)
14.45 – 15.00 Martijn Wokke (PSY)
15.00 – 15.15 ABC poster award
15.15 – 15.30 Tea Break
15.30 – 16.15 Keynote Henkjan Honing
16.15 – 16.35 Presentations Creatieve Geest Prijs nominees
16.35 – 17.00 Freek de Jonge: award of the Creatieve Geest Prijs 2015
17.00 – 18.00 Drinks and bites