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  3. William Shakespeare described old age as "second childishness" — sans teeth,

William Shakespeare described old age as "second childishness" — sans teeth,

游客2023-12-05  29
问题     William Shakespeare described old age as "second childishness" — sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste. In the case of taste he might, musically speaking, have been even more perceptive than he realized. A paper in Neurology by Giovanni Frisoni and his colleagues at the National Centre for Research and Care of Alzheimer’s Disease in Brescia, Italy, shows that one form of senile dementia can affect musical desires in ways that suggest a regression, if not to infancy, then at least to a patient’s teens.
    Frontotemporal dementia is caused, as its name suggests, by damage to the front and sides of the brain. These regions are concerned with speech, and with such "higher" functions as abstract thinking and judgment. Frontotemporal damage therefore produces different symptoms from the loss of memory associated with Alzheimer’s disease, a more familiar dementia that affects the hippocampus and amygdala in the middle of the brain. Frontotemporal dementia is also rarer than Alzheimer’s. In the past five years the centre in Brescia has treated some 1,500 Alzheimer’s patients; it has seen only 46 with frontotemporal dementia.
    Two of those patients interested Dr. Frisoni. One was a 68-year-old lawyer, the other a 73-year-old housewife. Both had undamaged memories, but displayed the sorts of defect associated with frontotemporal dementia — a diagnosis that was confirmed by brain scanning.
    About two years after he was first diagnosed, the lawyer, once a classical music lover who referred to pop music as "mere noise", started listening to the Italian pop band "883". As his command of language and his emotional attachments to friends and family deteriorated, he continued to listen to the band at full volume for many hours a day. The housewife had not even had the lawyer’s love of classical music, having never enjoyed music of any sort in the past. But about a year after her diagnosis she became very interested in the songs that her 11-year-old granddaughter was listening to.
    This kind of change in musical taste was not seen in any of the Alzheimer’s patients, and thus appears to be specific to those with frontotemporal dementia. And other studies have remarked on how frontotemporal dementia patients sometimes gain new talents. Five sufferers who developed artistic abilities are known. And in another lapse of musical taste, one woman with the disease suddenly started composing and singing country and western songs.
    Dr. Frisoni speculates that the illness is causing people to develop a new attitude towards novel experiences. Previous studies of novelty-seeking behavior suggest that it is managed by the brain’s right frontal lobe. A predominance of the right over the left frontal lobe, caused by damage to the latter, might thus lead to a quest for new experience. Alternatively, the damage may have affected some specific neural circuit that is needed to appreciate certain kinds of music. Whether that is a gain or a loss is a different matter. As Dr. Frisoni puts it in his article, De Gustibus Non Disputandum Est. Or, in plainer words, there is no accounting for taste. [br] From the two patients mentioned in the passage, it can be concluded that
选项 A、their command of language has deteriorated.
B、their emotional attachments to friends and family are being lost.
C、Frontotemporal dementia can bring new gifts.
D、Frontotemporal dementia can cause patients to change their musical tastes.
答案 D
解析 本题针对文章中提到的两个特殊病人进行考查，属于推理判断题。文章第五段中提到，“这种对音乐品味的变化在Alzheimer’s(阿尔茨海默病)病人中是看不到的。它好像是额颞叶痴呆症病人特有的症状”。而且文中提到的这两个人都是在爱好的音乐类型上发生了变化。[A]和[B]都只在描述那位律师病人时提到，不属于两人共同特点。[C]则是在第五段讲述other studies时提到，不是对这两个病人的研究结果：[D]是两位病人的共同特点，因此最为符合。虽然第五段也提到了这种病可以让人产生新的天分，但却是其他的研究所发现的。
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