Metaphors and Your Brain - Science World

In the concept of time, the future is commonly regarded as being “ahead” of us, and the past “behind.” How is that metaphoric, you may ask? In Bolivia and Chile, people who speak the language Aymara see time differently – they refer to the past as being in front of them, because the past is thought of as visible whereas the future is not.In both cases, space is being used as a metaphor for time, though in different ways.

Metaphors derive their power from how confused we are as human beings. Our brains have evolved to confuse the literal and the symbolic by cramming viscerally similar functions in the same brain areas.