Blending or conceptual integration

Conceptual integration or blending is a higher-order cognitive operation that allows the human mind to connect disparate experiences or thoughts through conceptual mappings (correspondences between mental structures) and produce a new conceptual whole with emergent properties. The originators of the Theory of Conceptual Integration are Gilles Fauconnier (who invented the notion of mental spaces, conceptual packets built as we think and talk, for local purposes) and Mark Turner.

According to Fauconnier & Turner, meaning arises from conceptual integration networks connecting mental structures built for ad-hoc purposes with entrenched schematic concepts and stored memories. Advanced blending allows us to integrate intricate networks of mental spaces that present strong conceptual clashes. Advanced blending may have been the origin of ideas, that is, the key addition to the capacities of the primate mind that distinguishes cognitively modern human beings (homo sapiens sapiens) from all other species.