题目内容
Even while in a deep sleep, people can still learn brand new information. Sleepers soak in new associations between smells and sounds, knowledge that lingers(逗留) into the next waking day, researchers report online August 26 in Nature Neuroscience.
The new study is the first to show that entirely new information can get into the sleeping mind, says Anat Arzi of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. “The brain is not passive while you sleep. It’s quite active. You can do quite a lot of things while you are asleep.”
But the results don’t mean that Spanish vocabulary tapes now have a place on the nightstand. Researchers have tried but largely failed to find evidence that complicated information, such as new pairs of words, can make its way into the brain during sleep.
Instead of trying to teach people something complicated like a new language, Arzi and her colleagues relied on the sense of smell and hearing. As anyone who has walked by a dumpster(垃圾车) in July knows, smells can elicit a nose-jerk reaction. Catching a bad smell automatically makes people inhale(吸气)less, reducing the size of the inhale. But a scent of fresh bread causes a long, deep inhale. Arzi and her team took advantage of this reaction for their experiment.
As people slept in the laboratory, the researchers delivered pleasant scent, such as shampoo. As this nice smell got into the sleepers’ noses, the researchers played a particular music. Later, a disgusting smell, such as rotten fish or carrion(腐肉), was paired with a different music. Neither the smell nor the sound woke people up. After just four exposures to the smell-music pair during a single night, the sleepers started to automatically respond to the tones without the accompanying smells, taking in bigger breaths when the shampoo-associated tone played and smaller breaths when played the sound linked to the rotten fish smell.
This new learned association lingered into the next waking day, too. Even though the sleepers had no idea they had been exposed to smells or sounds, their behavior proved that their brain had actually learned something during sleep. As before, the shampoo sound stimulated a long, deep inhale, while the rotten fish tone caused more shallow breaths.
66. We can infer from the passage that .
A. While sleeping, we can learn whatever we want to learn.
B. We will increase the size of inhale if we catch a pleasant smell.
C. The knowledge we learned while sleeping will be forgotten in the next waken day.
D. when walking by a bakery, the fresh bread will cause a nose-jerk reaction.
67. What is Paragraph 3 mainly about?
A. One can’t acquire complicated knowledge during the sleeping hours.
B. Spanish vocabulary tapes now have a place on the nightstand.
C. Researchers have tried to find evidence that the new words can be learned during sleep.
D. Complicated information can make its way into the brain during sleep.
68. How do Arzi and her team do their research?
A. By giving instructions. B. By analyzing human brains.
C. By following the guides of others. D. By doing experiments.
69. What’s the topic of this passage?
A. Different tone signifies different meaning
B. Arzi and her team learned the tones while sleep
C. Brain still learns while you sleep
D. Sleepers had no idea what they had learned
70. In which part of a website may this passage most likely appear?
A. Culture B. Science C. History D. Economy
BADCB
They may be small and not able to speak, but babies are proving their amazing cleverness. Scientists began finding infants’ skills are more than they are supposed to be.
_________
Speaking of music, babies can’t seem to resist it. Not only are their ears turned to the beats, babies can actually dance to the music.
To test babies’ dancing ability, the researchers played recordings of classical music, rhythmic beats and speech to infants, and recorded the results. They also invited professional dancers to analyze how well the babies matched their movements to the music. The babies moved their arms, hands, legs feet and heads in response to the music, much more than to the speech. The finding suggests this dancing ability is innate(与生俱来的) in humans, though the researchers aren’t sure why it becomes weaker later in their life.
Learning Quickly while Sleeping
Babies can learn even while asleep, according to a 2011 study. In experiments with 26 sleeping infants, each just 1 to 2 days old, scientists played a musical tone followed by a puff of air to their eyes 200 times over the course of a half-hour. 124 electrodes(电极) stuck on the head and face of each baby recorded brain activity during the experiments. The babies rapidly learned to foretell a puff of air upon hearing the tone, showing a four-time increase on average in the chances of tightening their eyelids in response to the sound by the end of the experiments.
As newborns spend most of their time asleep, this newfound ability might be crucial to rapidly adapting to the world around them and help to ensure their survival, researchers said.
Judging Characters Well
Judging another person helpful or harmful is crucial when choosing friends. And that ability starts early. Kiley Hamlin of Yale University showed both 6-and 10-month-olds a puppet(木偶) show, in which one character helped another climb a hill. In another scene a third character pushed the climber down. The little ones then got to choose which character they preferred. For both age groups, most babies chose the helper character. This character-judging ability could be baby’s first step in the formation of morals, Hamlin thought.
【小题1】Which of the following subtitles can fill in the underlined blank?
A.Dancing to Music | B.Babies’ Amazing Abilities |
C.Learning to Dance Quickly | D.Born to Dance |
A.the finding | B.the dancing ability |
C.the response | D.the baby |
A.babies can learn even while asleep |
B.babies can respond to the world around them |
C.babies can tighten their eyelids in response to the sound |
D.babies can communicate with others while asleep |
A.babies can judge a person helpful or harmful |
B.babies love to see a puppet show |
C.babies were born to help others |
D.babes have learned to help others |
阅读下面短文,根据所读内容在表格中的空白处填入恰当的单词。
注意:每个空格只填一个单词。
Invention is a creative process. An open and curious mind enables one to see beyond what is known. Seeing a new possibility, a new connection or relationship can spark(引发) an invention. Inventive thinking frequently involves combining concepts or elements from different fields that would not normally be put together. Sometimes inventors skip over the boundaries between separate fields. Ways of thinking, materials, processes or tools from one field are used as no one else has imagined in a different field.
Play can lead to invention. Childhood curiosity like playing in a sand box, imagination can develop one’s play nature—an inner need according to Carl Jung. Inventors feel the need to play with things that interest them, and to explore, and this internal drive brings about interesting creations.
Inventing can also be an obsession(痴迷). Inventors often imagine a new idea, seeing it in their mind’s eye. New ideas can arise when the conscious mind turns away from the subject or problem; or when the focus is on something else; or even while relaxing or sleeping. An unusual idea may come all of a sudden! For example, after years of working to figure out the general theory of relativity, the solution came to Einstein suddenly in a dream “like a giant die making an unforgettable impress, a huge map of the universe summarized itself in one clear vision”.
Invention can also be accidental. Insight(洞察力) is also an important element of invention. It may begin with questions or doubt. It may begin by recognizing something unusual. It may be useful and it could open a new way for exploration. For example, the odd metallic color of plastic made by accidentally adding too much catalyst(催化剂) led scientists to explore its metal-like properties(性能). They then invented electrically conductive plastic and light emitting(散发) plastic—an invention that won the Nobel Prize in 2000 and has led to new kind of lighting, display screens, wallpaper and much more.
Title: 1.
A(n) 2. process |
◆Look 3. than we know now. ◆Give combining concepts or 4. elements from different fields. ◆No one can 5. this before. |
An obsession |
◆ 6. often imagine a new idea. ◆An unusual idea may come 7. . |
A(n) 8. |
◆A vital element of invention is 9. . ◆It may open a new way for exploration. ◆Accidental actions can 10. to innovation. |