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  3. Scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethi

Scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethi

admin2019-09-15  9
问题    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. 【R1】__________
   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.
   【R2】__________
   For instance, it is a cultural cliche that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians pay attention to context and background. 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.
   【R3】__________
   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, but the smart money is on culture shaping the brain, not vice versa.
   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 Japanese 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 Japanese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements. But English speakers use language circuits. 【R4】__________ "One would think that neural processes involving basic mathematical computations are universal," says Ambady, but they "seem to be culture-specific."
   It’s also important to ask whether neuroscience reveals anything more than we already know from, say, anthropology. 【R5】__________ Does identifying brain correlates of those values offer any extra insight?
   After all, it’s not as if anyone thought those values are the result of something in the liver.
   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.
   [A] 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.
   [B] Scientists discover another case of experience shaping the brain: people who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.
   [C] To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when Americans think of their own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different.
   [D] 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.
   [E] It is as if the West conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight.
   [F] For instance, it’s well known that East Asian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and that Americans do the opposite.
   [G] "Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Some of the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, support longstanding notions of cultural differences.
【R4】
选项
答案E
解析 空格前是一项研究发现，指出英语母语者和日语母语者在进行某些数学运算时运用的大脑回路不同。空格后援引阿姆巴迪的话，指出包含基本数学计算的神经处理过程似乎也有文化特征。空格前后均涉及数学、算术、神经回路这些信息，故空格处应该也与此相关。各项中，只有E提到了相关信息。E讲到了东西方人对数字的不同看法，进一步说明前文的研究的发现，其中的the West conceives numbers as just words对应了空格前的English speakers use language circuits，而the East．．．spatial freight则对应了空格前的The Japanese．．．plan movements。故答案选E。
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