(Mind reading and metaphor)

Metaphor is a universal and important language phenomenon. As language is closely related to our brain, we can explore the complicated language processing mechanism by researching the brain, and in turn we can know the brain structures and their functions by studying language (Wang, 2010). In order to know the metaphor comprehension process, we should not only conduct research on its cognitive modals from the perspective of language, but also on its mental processing from the perspective of neural mechanism of the brain, as the process of metaphor comprehension is a mind reading process that undergoes within the united cognitive framework of human brain. This chapter extracts from Chinese Metaphorical Cognition & Its ERP Imaging (Wang, 2009) the contents concerning how human brain interprets metaphor to elaborate on the relationship between metaphor comprehension and mind reading. At first it discusses the representative processing modals of metaphor comprehension, and then reviews the researches on neural mechanism of metaphor cognition, based on which it introduces the study on neural mechanism of Chinese metaphorical cognition by means of ERP techniques so as to display the process and mode of mental interpretation of Chinese metaphors