Düşüncenin bedensel haritaları: Düşünceler kafanın farklı bölgelerinde toplanır

The mind and body are tied together; research on embodied cognition shows that people feel the Self and emotions in the body. They are processed in the mind and perceived through the body template. Building on this notion, we asked whether thoughts are experienced in the body template similarly and whether different kinds of thoughts are located in different bodily regions. In a behavioral experiment, we gave participants short scenarios in five different categories and asked them to imagine/think about those scenarios. Then they were asked to locate their thoughts and images on head and full-body templates. We compared within-category distances to between-category distances, examined each category pair for distinctness, and checked whether any category stood out for being especially tight and consistent. Results showed that people do locate their thoughts on their body template, and different thoughts are located differently from each other. Specifically, thoughts on mental arithmetic and auditory imagery formed distinct groups on the head template compared to other categories. In a second behavioral experiment, we replicated the task with blind and deaf individuals and found that distinct mapping patterns for different thoughts exist in blind individuals, but not in deaf individuals. When compared to other categories, auditory thoughts in blind individuals revealed a very clear and distinct pattern, while visual imagery in deaf individuals showed a distinct localization that differed from other thoughts. Taken together, our findings show that thoughts are located in the body template, with different thoughts located distinctly from each other, and that these localizations are affected by visual and auditory loss.