Which of the following is NOT Dr. Horton's point of view?
A. Sometimes science and advocacy conflict each other.
B. The figures will not hinder women health advocates' cause.
C. The current study is more trustworthy and sophisticated.
D. The current study has important positive findings for global health.
Television
Television is the greatest communication medium ever designed and operated by man. It sends into the human brain an 【B1】______ amount of opinions and information and 【B2】______ moral and artistic standards for all of us. Every minute of a television programme teaches us something. It is never neutral (中立的) 【B3】______ . For example, how and when public issues are 【B4】______ depends in large part 【B5】______ how they are treated by the television networks in entertainment 【B6】______ news and public affairs programmes. What the American people think about government and politics in 【B7】______ , as well as a favorite candidate in 【B8】______ , is largely influenced by 【B9】______ .
Unfortunately, commercial television seldom 【B10】______ anything of value to our lives. Many American express a deep hostility (敌意) 【B11】______ television because they know most TV programmes are 【B12】______ poor quality and that something these programmes are even 【B13】______ .
The question is: how can television be improved? There are many things the ordinary 【B14】______ can do. For example, he 【B15】______ complain to his local TV stations about offensive advertising. He can 【B16】______ citizens' groups to urge local TV stations to 【B17】______ their programmes. 【B18】______ these groups should propose regular analyses of special TV commercials and programmes by educators, doctors, etc. to 【B19】______ the influence of these programmes on children and adults. Television can be our most exciting medium if we just think about 【B20】______ to improve it.
A. endless
B. ending
C. ended
D. end
Why did some advocates for women's health try to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings?
A. Because there actually has been no progress.
Because they are not quite sure about the figures.
C. Because they fear that these figures will steer public attention away from the issue.
D. Because they fear that these figures will damage their cause.
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, "att
A. the assumption that human experience can change human brain structure has already been widely proved
B. human experience can change brain structure
C. stroke patients can restore mobility by themselves
D. people blindfolded for several days can still have visual ability