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  3. Scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethi

Scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethi

admin2019-09-15  11
问题    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. 【R1】__________
   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.
   【R2】__________
   For instance, it is a cultural cliche that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians pay attention to context and background. 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.
   【R3】__________
   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, but the smart money is on culture shaping the brain, not vice versa.
   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 Japanese 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 Japanese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements. But English speakers use language circuits. 【R4】__________ "One would think that neural processes involving basic mathematical computations are universal," says Ambady, but they "seem to be culture-specific."
   It’s also important to ask whether neuroscience reveals anything more than we already know from, say, anthropology. 【R5】__________ Does identifying brain correlates of those values offer any extra insight?
   After all, it’s not as if anyone thought those values are the result of something in the liver.
   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.
   [A] 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.
   [B] Scientists discover another case of experience shaping the brain: people who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.
   [C] To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when Americans think of their own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different.
   [D] 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.
   [E] It is as if the West conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight.
   [F] For instance, it’s well known that East Asian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and that Americans do the opposite.
   [G] "Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Some of the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, support longstanding notions of cultural differences.
【R1】
选项
答案C
解析 空格后是一个情景对比，其中的特指表达The“me”circuit、they以及The Westerners提示，空格处应该会交代它们具体指代什么内容。各项中，C最符合上下文语境。C中的the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self即空格后说的The“me”circuit，而Chinese volunteers即空格后they的指代对象，Americans则对应空格前后提及的The Westerners。空格后的内容是对C末句的具体说明，指出参与实验研究的中国人与西方人有何不同的反应。故C正确。
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