首页
登录
职称英语
By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another c
By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another c
游客
2024-12-27
11
管理
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 cliché 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. [br] 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://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3887177.html
相关试题推荐
Doyouagreewiththefollowingstatement?Governmentshouldsupportscienti
Shouldgovernmentsspendmoremoneyinimprovingroadsandhighways,orshou
TheUSConstitutionrequiresthatthepresidentshouldbea______-year-oldnativ
Anyonebelievingtheglobaleconomiccrisistobeovershouldhavetakenal
ScientistssaidThursdaythatanewAIDSvaccine,thefirsteverdeclaredto
ScientistssaidThursdaythatanewAIDSvaccine,thefirsteverdeclaredto
WhenscientistsattheAustralianInstituteofSportrecentlydecidedtoche
WhenscientistsattheAustralianInstituteofSportrecentlydecidedtoche
WhenscientistsattheAustralianInstituteofSportrecentlydecidedtoche
WhenscientistsattheAustralianInstituteofSportrecentlydecidedtoche
随机试题
AGenomeMilestoneItwasthebiggestscientificgru
ReadthetextbelowandanswerQuestions8-14.[img]2015m5x/ct_eirm_eirread_0246
WhydoesJohnwanttobuyabicycle?A、Toreplacehisstolenbicycle.B、Tobegin
WhenIneedgasformycar,Ipullintoagasstationrightaroundthecorner
钻研业务是指在消防从业中刻苦钻研,深入探究并掌握火灾发生、发展的规律,以及防火的
某企业现金收支状况比较稳定,全年的现金需要量为200000元,每次转换有价证券的
下述有关淋巴细胞冷冻保存的叙述中,错误的是A.降温速度宜慢 B.液氮内可长期保
患者男性,60岁。血压140/90mmHg,诊断为1级高血压,遵医嘱给予非药物治
《威斯特伐利亚和约》:
施工现场临时用水量计算包括()。A.现场施工用水量 B.施工机械用水量 C.
最新回复
(
0
)