Processing scientific metaphors and poetic metaphors show different temporal dynamics. The novelty of scientific metaphors and poetic metaphors requires the integration of two unrelated concepts to establish a new semantic connection.The novelty of scientific metaphors and poetic metaphors taxes more effort in integrating the concepts. As time passes by, the difficulty in processing scientific metaphors maintains high while that for poetic metaphors decreases.The difficulty in processing scientific metaphors maintains high while that for poetic metaphors decreases.