What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer begins with changes to ou

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问题     What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention.【B6】_______________
    The way we move our bodies further changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa.【B7】_____________Likewise, when drivers hear loud, fast music, they unconsciously step a bit harder on the gas pedal. Walking at our own pace creates an unadulterated feedback loop between the rhythm of our bodies and our mental state that we cannot experience as easily when we’re jogging at the gym, steering a car, biking, or during any other kind of locomotion.
    Where we walk matters as well. In a study led by Marc Berman of the University of South Carolina, students who ambled through an arboretum improved their performance on a memory test more than students who walked along city streets. A small but growing collection of studies suggests that spending time in green spaces—gardens, parks, forests—can rejuvenate the mental resources that man-made environments deplete.【B8】_____________In contrast, walking past a pond in a park allows our mind to drift casually from one sensory experience to another, from wrinkling water to rustling reeds.
    Still, urban and pastoral walks respectively offer unique advantages for the mind.【B9】______________Virginia Woolf.
    an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century, relished the creative energy of London’s streets, describing it in her diary as "being on the highest crest of the biggest wave, right in the centre and swim of things." But she also depended on her walks through England’s South Downs to have space to spread her mind out in. And, in her youth, she often travelled to Cornwall for the summer, where she loved to spend her afternoons in solitary trampling through the countryside.
    There, it becomes apparent that writing and walking are extremely similar feats, equal parts physical and mental.【B10】________________Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands. Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts.
    [A]  Psychologists have learned that attention is a limited resource that continually drains throughout the day, for example, crowded intersection—rife with pedestrians, cars, and billboards—bats our attention around.
    [B]   Psychologists who specialize in exercise music have quantified what many of us already know: listening to songs with high tempos motivates us to run faster, and the swifter we move, the quicker we prefer our music.
    [C]  A walk through a city provides more immediate stimulation—a greater variety of sensations for the mind to play with. But, if we are already at the brink of overstimulation, we can turn to nature in-stead.
    [D]  When we stroll, the pace of our feet naturally vacillates with our moods and the cadence of our inner speech; at the same time, we can actively change the pace of our thoughts by deliberately walking more briskly or by slowing down.
    [E]   When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps.
    [F]  Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.
    [G]  Because we don’t have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander—to overlay the world before us with a parade of images from the mind’s theatre.
【B9】

选项

答案C

解析 空格前指出在城市和乡间漫步各有独特的好处。空格后是个具体的例子,讲述伍尔芙既喜欢伦敦街道带给她的创造性能量,也享受可以让她拥有发散思维的乡间漫步,这个例子对应了空格前的内容,因此空格处应该还是与此话题相关。C分别谈到在城市漫步和投身大自然的好处,紧扣空格前的内容,也与空格后的例子吻合;其中A walk through a city和turn to nature对应空格前的urban and pastoral walks。故C为本题答案。
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