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
2012-12-01
83
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 cliche 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/xmaO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
DavidLandes,authorofTheWealthandPovertyofNations:WhySomeAreSoRichandSomeSoPoor,creditstheworld’seconomics
IftherewasonethingAmericanshadarighttoexpectfromCongress,itwasafederalplantohelptheelderlypayforprescrip
Modernlinguisticsdiffersfromtraditionalgrammarforitismostly
A、Togreatlyrestrictpublicsmoking.B、Tobansmokinginallpublicplaces.C、Tosupervisesmokinginsomebars.D、Tobanpubli
Researchersinvestigatingbrainsizeandmentalabilitysaytheirworkoffersevidencethateducationprotectsthemindfromthe
Anniversariesaretheopiumofmuseums,publishers,theatersandoperahouses.Fixingtheireyesonsomeround-numberbirthord
______isregardedasthe"fatherofmodernlinguistics".
IntheUnitedStates,charterschoolsprovidealternativesto"regular"publicschools.Unlikemostpublicschools,chartersdon
BritishEducationⅠ.BritishEducationActsA.1870Act:inspiredbytheexampleofmass【1】inGermany【1】______B.190
______approachthesamelinguisticunitfromdifferentperspectives.
随机试题
(2008年)点沿轨迹已知的平面曲线(见图4—36)运动时,其速度大小不变,加速度a应为()。
以下对转让信用证的表述中,错误的是()。
如果用于资本项目,敏感性分析:
乙公司的流动资产由速动资产和存货组成,年末流动资产为70万元,年末流动比率为2,年末速动比率为l,则年末存货余额为()万元。
在市场经济条件下,决定物业租金水平高低的因素是()。
党的十九大报告要求:加快社会治安防控体系建设,依法打击和惩治黄赌毒黑拐骗等违法犯罪活动,保护人民的:
《九章律》
设3阶对称矩阵A的特征向量值λ1=1,λ2=2,λ3=-2,又α=(1,-l,1)T是A的属于λ1的一个特征向量.记B=A5-4A3+E,其中E为3阶单位矩阵.(I)验证α1是矩阵B的特征向量,并求B的全部特征值与特征向量;(Ⅱ)求矩阵B.
下列各种方法中,哪一种方法不能解除死锁?()
Accordingtoa【B1】______,about25percentofcollegestudentshaveapart-timejob.Bytheupcomingsummervacation,thisfigur
最新回复
(
0
)