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
考研
Feeling anxious? Your mood may actually change how your dinner tastes, making the bitter and salty flavors recede, according to
Feeling anxious? Your mood may actually change how your dinner tastes, making the bitter and salty flavors recede, according to
admin
2011-03-11
117
问题
Feeling anxious? Your mood may actually change how your dinner tastes, making the bitter and salty flavors recede, according to new research. This link between the chemical balance in your brain and your sense of taste could one day help doctors to treat depression. There are currently no on-the-spot tests for deciding which medication will work best in individual patients with this condition. Researchers hope that a test based on flavor detection could help doctors to get more prescriptions right first time.
It has long been known that people who are depressed have lower-than-usual levels of the brain chemicals serotonin or noradrenaline, or in some cases both. Many also have a blunted sense of taste, which is presumably caused by changes in brain chemistry. To unpick the relationship between the two, Lucy Donaldson and her colleagues at the University of Bristol, UK, gave 20 healthy volunteers two antidepressant drugs, and checked their sensitivity to different tastes. The drug that raised serotonin levels made people more sensitive to sweet and bitter tastes, the team reports in the Journal of Neuroscience. The other, which increased noradrenaline, enhanced recognition of bitter and sour tastes.
In healthy people, volunteers whose anxiety levels were naturally higher were less sensitive to bitter and salty tastes. "What hasn’t been done be{ore is to look precisely at which tastes are affected in depression," says Donaldson. Now the results are in, "we can discriminate between the chemicals and the tastes that seem to be altered," she says. Testing sensitivity to sweet and sour tastes could potentially help doctors to pick up on which chemicals are dipping, guiding them when choosing which drug to rectify the problem.
Currently, doctors rely on physical and emotional symptoms to make a best guess at an individual’s imbalance, prescribe a drug and wait about a month to check on any improvement. Good doctors have about a 60-80% success rate in selecting the right drug the first time, says psychiatrist Jan Melichar, a co-author on the paper. Are there any decent tests for prescribing drugs for depression? "No. We do a best guesstimate," says Melichar. "I’m excited by this finding because in 3, 5 or 7 years we could have a simple taste test. "
Next, the team plans to perform similar tests in depressed people, and in healthy volunteers given another brain chemical called tryptophan. This chemical would lower the healthy subjects’ levels of serotonin, as actually happens in depressed patients.
The work has also generated interest from flavor houses--companies that develop chemicals for the food and drink industry--who are interested in making foods taste just as sweet with half the amount of sugar. "Theoretically there would be the possibility of enhancing your meal with drugs that affect brain chemicals so that things would taste better--you couid have a ’designer taste tablet’," Donaldson says.
Which of the following is TRUE as to the results of the research?
选项
A、Increased serotonin weakens sensitivity to the tastes of bitter and sour.
B、The more anxious people are, the more sensitive to sour taste.
C、The tryptophan can add healthy people’s serotonin amount.
D、The tryptophan can lower healthy people’s serotonin level.
答案
D
解析
[C]和[D]意思相反,故答案可能为二者之一。文章倒数第二段末句提到“这种化学物质可以降低健康人群的血清素浓度,“这种化学物质”指的就是前文提到的色氨酸,因此[D]为正确答案。第二段倒数第二句提到“能够提高血清素浓度的药使人们对甜味和苦味更加敏感”,[A]与之矛盾。第三段首句提到“焦虑水平本来就高的志愿者对苦味和咸味不是很敏感”,[B]与之矛盾。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/H2p4777K
0
考研英语一
相关试题推荐
Humanshavealteredtheworld’sclimateby(1)_____heat-trappinggasessincealmostthebeginningofcivilizationandevenprev
Humanshavealteredtheworld’sclimateby(1)_____heat-trappinggasessincealmostthebeginningofcivilizationandevenprev
Wecaninferfromthefirsttwoparagraphsthattheindustrialistsdisregardenvironmentalprotectionchieflybecause______.W
There(1)_____notonetypeofreadingbutseveralaccordingtoyourreasonsforreading.Toreadefficiently,youhaveto(2)__
Accordingtothepassage,"thingsformerlyjudgedtobebestleftunsaid"(Para.1)probablyrefersto______Theword"spotlig
Intheopeningparagraph,theauthorintroduceshistopicbyTowhichofthefollowingstatementswouldtheauthormostlikely
Thefirsttwostagesinthedevelopmentofcivilizedmanwereprobablytheinventionofprimitiveweaponsandthediscoveryoff
Thefirsttwostagesinthedevelopmentofcivilizedmanwereprobablytheinventionofprimitiveweaponsandthediscoveryoff
ThesizeoftheEskimolanguagespokenbymostwhitesis______.Inthepassage,theauthormentioned:"Eskimowordsarehighly
Manyteachersbelievethattheresponsibilitiesforlearningliewiththestudent.(1)_____alongreadingassignmentisgiven,
随机试题
中国新民主主义革命的主要形式是()
A.膈俞、血海B.大椎、曲池C.肾俞、夹脊D.足三里、商丘、阴陵泉E.肾俞、关元
A.可抗血小板聚集和抗血栓形成B.主要用于肝素过量引起的出血C.直接激活纤溶酶原转变为纤溶酶,起到溶血栓作用D.主要用于恶性贫血和巨幼红细胞性贫血E.用于香豆素类引起自发性出血的解救维生素B12的作用
现金流量三要素不包括()。
如税法规定交易性金融资产在持有期间公允价值变动不计入应纳税所得额,则交易性金融资产的账面价值与计税基础之间可能会产生差异,该差异是可抵扣暂时性差异。()
导游员在引导游客购物时,应在旅游合同允许的范围内进行。()
在民法中,把年满16周岁未满18周岁并以自己的劳动收入为主要生活来源且精神正常的自然人视为完全民事行为能力人。()
根据所给文字资料,回答91~95题2010年5月1日到10月31日,世博会在中国上海举行。自开幕以来,世博会的消费拉动效应初步显现。世博园区共有浦东和浦西两个片区,5月份的销售总额为4.13亿元,其中浦东片区的销售额占89.4%。园区5月份
(2008下系分)某公司拥有多个应用系统,分别采用不同的语言和平台独立构建而成,企业需要集成来自不同系统的数据,并使用可定制格式的数据频繁地、立即地、可靠地、异步地传输数据。以下集成方式,最能满足这种要求的是______。
在窗体上画一个命令按钮,其名称为Command1,然后编写如下程序:FunctionM(xAsInteger,yAsInteger)AsIntegerM=IIf(x>y,x,y)EndFunctionPr
最新回复
(
0
)