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
110
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.
The flavour houses are interested in the research because it helps______.
选项
A、make the food we eat taste more delicious
B、enhance our meal by drugs which can affect brain chemicals
C、boost the development of chemical production
D、produce a chemical which reduces the amount of industry material
答案
D
解析
文章最后一段提到了flavor houses的兴趣——用一半数量的糖使食物尝起来很甜。由这一例子我们推断这项研究有助于发明一种化学制品以减少工业原材料的使用,故[D]正确。最后一段第二句提到“从理论上来说,通过能够影响大脑化学元素的药物来增加食欲是可能的”这只是一种理论,并没有实践,故排除[B]。[A]和[C]文中皆未提到,故排除。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/T2p4777K
0
考研英语一
相关试题推荐
Darwinisbasicallyright,thoughonlytosomeextentthatspeciesandindividualscompete,fight,killandsurvivalbelongsto
WhichofthefollowingstatementsisNOTtrueaccordingtothefirsttwoparagraphsofthepassage?Whatdoestheword"which"
Humanshavealteredtheworld’sclimateby(1)_____heat-trappinggasessincealmostthebeginningofcivilizationandevenprev
Humanshavealteredtheworld’sclimateby(1)_____heat-trappinggasessincealmostthebeginningofcivilizationandevenprev
Bywhatmeansdothechildrenoftheauthor’sfamilygotoschool?Ifahousewifewentonstrike,whichoneofthefollowingst
Firecanbethoughtofasanycombustionprocessintenseenoughtoemitlight.Itmaybeaquietlyburningflameorthebrillian
Almostexactlyayearago,inasmallvillageinNorthernIndia,AndreaMillinerwasbittenonthelegbyadog."Itmusthave(
Almostexactlyayearago,inasmallvillageinNorthernIndia,AndreaMillinerwasbittenonthelegbyadog."Itmusthave(
Almostexactlyayearago,inasmallvillageinNorthernIndia,AndreaMillinerwasbittenonthelegbyadog."Itmusthave(
Almostexactlyayearago,inasmallvillageinNorthernIndia,AndreaMillinerwasbittenonthelegbyadog."Itmusthave(
随机试题
对公司一定时期财务活动的总结与评价,为公司进行下一步的财务预测和财务决策提供依据的是()
山气日夕佳,_________。(陶渊明《饮酒》(其五))
Pickouttheappropriateexpressionsfromtheeightchoicesbelowandcompletethefollowingdialoguesbyblackeningthecorresp
A.使君子B.苦楝皮C.川楝子D.槟榔E.南瓜子对蛔虫、绦虫、蛲虫、鞭虫和血吸虫都有效的药物是
一小儿体重7kg,身高65cm,头围42cm,乳牙2枚,能独坐一会儿,不能听懂自己的名字,此小儿的年龄最可能是
王某的父亲和李某的母亲是同胞兄妹。王某和李某结婚后,因性格不合,李某起诉离婚。后李某变更诉讼请求为认定其与王某的婚姻关系无效。关于本案,下列哪一说法是错误的?()
城市规划中,在地震烈度为()的地震区内可以进行城市建设,但要考虑防震措施,避免地震对城市造成破坏。
关于经济周期中的经营理财策略,下列说法正确的有()。
简述最近发展区的含义及其教育意义。
简述上下级人民检察院的关系及其表现。
最新回复
(
0
)