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  3. In a famous episode of the TV show Seinfeld, a "close talker" makes others uncomfortable by standing mere centimeters from their

In a famous episode of the TV show Seinfeld, a "close talker" makes others uncomfortable by standing mere centimeters from their

admin2015-03-25  106
问题     In a famous episode of the TV show Seinfeld, a "close talker" makes others uncomfortable by standing mere centimeters from their faces while speaking. What makes this invasion of our personal space so uncomfortable? A new study fingers the amygdala, a region of the brain that acts like a warning bell when someone gets too close for comfort.
    Psychologists have studied personal space since the 1960s. They’ve found that Americans and northern Europeans prefer a larger personal space than southern Europeans, for example, whereas people with autism(a tendency to view life in terms of one’s own needs and desires)tend to unknowingly invade others’ personal space. Studies in monkeys have hinted that the amygdala, an almond-shaped region in the middle of the brain that helps us recognize threats, plays a role in personal space. But the theory proved hard to test in humans.
    Then, about 15 years ago, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena met a 42-year-old woman with a rare genetic disorder that destroyed both sides of her amygdala. In early experiments, the scientists discovered that the woman, referred to as SM, couldn’t spot fear in other people’s faces; she also rated people as more trustworthy than an average person did. And she was extremely outgoing, "almost to the point where it isn’t normal," says team member Daniel Kennedy. Even if she’s only just met someone, he says, SM will invade their personal space—touching their arm as she talks or poking their stomach.
    In the new study, Kennedy and his colleagues more rigorously tested SM’s sense of personal space. They compared her with 20 healthy subjects in a series of experiments. In one test, an experimenter slowly walked toward a subject until the subject felt uncomfortable and told the experimenter to stop. SM let experimenters get about twice as close as other subjects did, 0. 34 meters versus 0.64 meters, the team reports online this week in Nature Neuroscience. She even felt fine standing nose to nose with an experimenter.
    Further experiments revealed why. Kennedy and his colleagues placed eight healthy subjects, one at a time, inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which measures brain activity. Then an experimenter stood either about 4. 5 meters away from the machine or right next to the machine’s opening. The subjects’ amygdalas lit up with significantly more activity when the stranger stood close by. "Our findings support the idea that the amygdala functions as the brakes in social interactions," Kennedy says. "If you take away the amygdala, it seems like you are less tuned to...social(behaviors)that can cause discomfort. "
    The study is "a novel piece of research" that is the first to identify a neural(of a nerve or the nervous system)source of personal space in people, says Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "It’s also part of a growing series of studies that underscore the importance of the amygdala in human social interactions," he says.
According to the passage, studies in monkeys
选项 A、were made by some psychologists.
B、hinted that the amygdala plays a role in personal space.
C、showed that Americans tend to invade others’ personal space unknowingly.
D、showed that Americans prefer a larger personal space than northern Europeans.
答案B
解析 事实细节题。由题干关键词studies in monkeys定位至第二段。该段倒数第二句提到“对猴子的研究表明，扁桃腺在个人空间中起着作用。”[B]与之相符，故为正确答案。第二段首句只是提及“心理学家从19世纪60年代开始研究个人空间”，但是并未说明下文对猴子的研究是心理学家做的，故排除[A]；由第二段末句可知，[C]和[D]都属于对心理学家所做的实验的推测，与题干提到的studies in monkeys不相符，故均排除。
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