首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the senso
By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the senso
admin
2012-04-23
39
问题
By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the sensory information we absorb to the movements we make, our lives leave footprints on the bumps and fissures of our cortex, so much so that experiences can alter "hard-wired" brain structures. Through rehab, stroke patients can coax a region of the motor cortex on the opposite side of the damaged region to pinch-hit, restoring lost mobility; volunteers who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.
Still, scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when we ("we" being the Americans in the study) think of our own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me" circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom. Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self as autonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes on quite different functions.
"Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Some of the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, buttress longstanding notions of cultural differences. For instance, it is a cultural cliché that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians pay attention to context and background (another manifestation of the individualism-collectivism split). Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes, Asian-Americans and non-Asian—Americans recruited different brain regions. The Asians showed more activity in areas that process figure-ground relations—holistic context—while the Americans showed more activity in regions that recognize objects.
Psychologist Nalini Ambady of Tufts found something similar when she and colleagues showed drawings of people in a submissive pose (head down, shoulders hunched) or a dominant one (arms crossed, face forward) to Japanese and Americans. The brain’s dopamine-fueled reward circuit became most active at the sight of the stance—dominant for Americans, submissive for Japanese—that each volunteer’s culture most values, they reported in 2009. This raises an obvious chicken-and-egg question.
Cultural neuroscience wouldn’t be making waves if it found neurobiological bases only for well-known cultural differences. It is also uncovering the unexpected. For instance, a 2006 study found that native Chinese speakers use a different region of the brain to do simple arithmetic (3+ 4) or decide which number is larger than native English speakers do, even though both use Arabic numerals. The Chinese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements (the latter may be related to the use of the abacus). But English speakers use language circuits. It is as if the West Conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight. "One would think that neural processes involving basic mathematical computations are universal," says Ambady, but they "seem to be culture-specific. "
Not to be the skunk at this party, but I think it’s important to ask whether neuroscience reveals anything more than we already know from, say, anthropology. For instance, it’s well known that East Asian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and that Americans do the opposite.
Ambady thinks cultural neuroscience does advance understanding. Take the me/mom finding, which, she argues, "attests to the strength of the overlap between self and people close to you in collectivistic cultures and the separation in individualistic cultures. It is important to push the analysis to the level of the brain. " Especially when it shows how fundamental cultural differences are—so fundamental, perhaps, that "universal" notions such as human rights, democracy, and the like may be no such thing.
The passage most probably appears in a______.
选项
A、scientific report
B、biography
C、novel
D、newspaper
答案
A
解析
本题为推断题。根据原文的话题,我们可以推断出原文最有可能出现在科学报告中,不可能出现在传记、小说或报刊报道中。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/9GiO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Ascollegeseniorshurtleintothejobhunt,littlefibsontheresume--forexample,claimingsdegreewhenthey’rethreecredit
Ascollegeseniorshurtleintothejobhunt,littlefibsontheresume--forexample,claimingsdegreewhenthey’rethreecredit
LanguageFamiliesAllofthelanguageswithinalanguagefamilyare【1】andallofthemhaveasimilarhistory.Let’stakeabr
LanguageFamiliesAllofthelanguageswithinalanguagefamilyare【1】andallofthemhaveasimilarhistory.Let’stakeabr
A、heshouldgotoseethedoctorB、thedreammightcometrueC、hemayprobablyhaveabigproblemwhichheisunabletoresolve
Istheliterarycriticlikethepoet,respondingcreatively,intuitively,subjectivelytothewrittenwordasthepoetresponds
TheshortstoryTheMurderintheRueMorguewaswrittenby______.
Universitiesarenolongerrelativelyemptyinsummer.Asthestudentsmoveout,holiday-makersmove,eventothemostunl
A、hedidn’twanttoapprovetheresignationofEducationMinister.B、theresignedofficialswantedtheopportunitytoprovethei
推进产业结构优化升级,形成以高新技术产业为先导、基础产业和制造业为支撑、服务业全面发展的产业格局。优先发展信息产业,在经济和社会领域广泛应用信息技术。积极发展对经济增长有突破性重大带动作用的高新技术产业。用高新技术和先进适用技术改造传统产业,大力振兴装备制
随机试题
奥利司他的临床应用注意事项有
中医认为流行性腮腺炎的病机主要是风温邪毒壅阻
《企业职工伤亡事故分类标准》(GB6441-1986)将企业工伤事故分为20类,其中不包括()。
冬期开挖路堑表层冻土时,1m以上的冻土层采用下面哪种方法施工合适( )。
某机电工程采用EPC/交钥匙总承包的方式进行公开招标,并在国家发改委依法指定的媒体上发布了招标公告和资格预审公告。公告中明确说明了承包商报名时间及提供的资料;工程的基本情况;投标人需提交标书费用、押金、投标保函的要求;投标人获取和送达标书的方式、地点和起止
2009年全国研究机构R&D经费995.9亿元,是2000年的3.9倍,年平均增长16.2%。按活动类型分,基础研究经费110.6亿元,占11.1%;应用研究经费350.9亿元,占35.2%;试验发展经费534.4亿元,占53.7%。基
选出下列文化常识的有关内容。秀才、举人、贡士、进士依次是封建社会科举考试中______、______、______、______的合格者。
以下关于MIS基本任务的描述中,不正确的是
Themostnoticeabletrendamongtoday’smediacompaniesisverticalintegration—anattempttocontrolseveralrelatedaspectsof
我到那儿就给你打电话。
最新回复
(
0
)