The Empirical Research Path of Yin-Yang Thinking in Traditional Chinese Medicine / 中医杂志

ABSTRACT

The yin-yang theory is a thinking model used by ancient people to recognize the world， which is highly compatible with multimodal metaphors. By summarizing the current researches on traditional Chinese medicine （TCM） yin-yang theory and thinking， it is found that there are more clinical researches but few empirical studies， and more conceptual studies but few empirical researches. In view of this， we proposed to conduct researches on TCM yin-yang thinking with the methods such as behavioral experiments， event-related potentials， and functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques， based on the multimodal metaphor theory from the perspective of cognitive science. According to the characteristics of yin-yang， the process of TCM yin-yang thinking is divided into two stages which are yin-yang classification and yin-yang reasoning， and the main directions of empirical research on yin-yang thinking in TCM are outlined by combining with the paradigm of cognitive science， that is， the researches are carried out from the cognitive characteristics of TCM yin-yang thinking， as well as the differences in cognitive mechanisms between TCM yin-yang thinking and western logical thinking.