The business practices of America will have you in the office from nine in the morning to five in the evening, if not longer. Mu

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问题     The business practices of America will have you in the office from nine in the morning to five in the evening, if not longer. Much of the world, though, prefers to take a nap. And research presented to the AAAS (American Academy of Arts and Sciences) meeting in San Diego suggests it may be right to do so. Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. A post-meal snooze, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning.
    The role of sleep in consolidating memories that have already been created has been understood for some time. Dr Walker has been trying to extend this understanding by looking at sleep’s role in preparing the brain for the formation of memories in the first place. He was particularly interested in a type of memory called episodic memory, which relates to specific events, places and times. This contrasts with procedural memory, of the skills required to perform some sort of mechanical task, such as driving. The theory he and his team wanted to test was that the ability to form new episodic memories deteriorates with increasing wakefulness, and that sleep thus restores the brain’s capacity for efficient learning.
    They asked a group of 39 people to take part in two learning sessions, one at noon and one at 6pm. On each occasion the participants tried to memorize and recall 100 combinations of pictures and names. After the first session they were assigned randomly to either a control group, which remained awake, or a nap group, which had 100 minutes of monitored sleep. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. Those who napped, by contrast, actually improved their capacity to learn, doing better in the evening than they had at noon. These findings suggest that sleep is clearing the brain’s short-term memory and making way for new information.
    The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a nap. The dazedness that results from an unrefreshing nap is termed "sleep inertia". Sara Mednick, from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that non-habitual nappers suffer from this more often than those who snooze regularly. It may be that those who have a tendency to wake up dazed are choosing not to nap in the first place. Perhaps, though, as in so many things, it is practice that makes perfect.
Dr. Walker has been trying to find out ________.

选项 A、the role of sleep in enhancing memory that has been created
B、the relationship between episodic memories and sleep
C、the role of brain in forming new episodic memories
D、differences between episodic and procedural memories

答案B

解析 根据Dr. Walker has been trying可定位到第二段。该段第五句说,沃克博士和他的研究小组想检验这一理论,即形成新的片段记忆的能力随着不眠的增加而下降,因此睡眠可以修复大脑高效学习的能力。由此可知,Dr. Walker想要知道的是片段记忆和睡眠的关系,所以B项正确。根据第二段第一句,A项是已经知道的事实,所以沃克博士不需要再去研究,故可排除。沃克博士要研究的是睡眠的作用而不是大脑的作用,C项张冠李戴。文中虽然提到片段记忆和程序性记忆不同,但根据第二段第三四句,它们的差异是已经知道的(片段记忆与特定的事件、地点和时间相关,而程序性记忆具有执行某种机械性工作如驾驶的技能),因此沃克博士不需要再研究它们的区别,由此可排除D项。
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