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  3. The belief that the mind plays an important role in physical illness goes back to the earliest days of medicine. From the time o

The belief that the mind plays an important role in physical illness goes back to the earliest days of medicine. From the time o

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问题     The belief that the mind plays an important role in physical illness goes back to the earliest days of medicine. From the time of the ancient Greeks to the beginning of the 20th century, it was generally accepted by both physician and patient that the mind can affect the course of illness, and it seemed natural to apply this concept in medical treatments of disease. After the discovery of antibiotics, a new assumption arose that treatment of infectious or inflammatory disease requires only the elimination of the foreign organism or agent that triggers the illness. In the rush to discover new antibiotics and drugs that cure specific infections and diseases, the fact that the body’s own responses can influence susceptibility to disease and its course was largely ignored by medical researchers.
    It is ironic that research into infectious and inflammatory disease first led 20th-century medicine to reject the idea that the mind influences physical illness, and now research in the same field—including the work of our laboratory and of our collaborators at the National Institutes of Health—is proving the contrary. New molecular and pharmacological tools have made it possible for us to identify the intricate network that exists between the immune system and the brain, a network that allows the two systems to signal each other continuously and rapidly. Chemicals produced by immune cells signal the brain, and the brain in turn sends chemical signals to restrain the immune system. These same chemical signals also affect behavior and the response to stress. Disruption of this communication network in any way, whether inherited or through drugs, toxic substances or surgery, exacerbates the diseases that these systems guard against: infectious, inflammatory, autoimmune and associated mood disorders.
    The clinical significance of these findings is likely to prove. They hold the promise of extending the range of therapeutic treatments available for various disorders, as drugs previously known to work primarily for nervous system problems are shown to be effective against immune maladies, and vice versa. They also help to substantiate the popularly held impression(still discounted in some medical circles)that our state of mind can influence how well we resist or recover from infectious or inflammatory diseases.
    The brain’s stress response system is activated in threatening situations. The immune system responds automatically to pathogens and foreign molecules. These two response systems are the body’s principal means for maintaining an internal steady state called homeostasis. A substantial proportion of human cellular machinery is dedicated to maintaining it.
    When homeostasis is disturbed or threatened, a repertoire of molecular, cellular and behavioral responses comes into play. These responses attempt to counteract the disturbing forces in order to reestablish a steady state. They can be specific to the foreign invader or a particular stress, or they can be generalized and nonspecific when the threat to homeostasis exceeds a certain threshold. The adaptive responses may themselves turn into stressors capable of producing disease. We are just beginning to understand the many ways in which the brain and the immune system are interdependent, how they help to regulate and counterregulate each other and how they themselves can malfunction and produce diseases.
Which of the following best states the mind-body interaction in disease?
选项 A、The brain and immune system send signals to each other.
B、The immune and central nervous systems are organized in very different ways to affect the course of illness.
C、Disruption of the communication of the brain and immune system can cure certain diseases.
D、The immune system and the brain share a lot of hormones to facilitate their communication.
答案A
解析 根据文中第二段的“New molecular and pharmacological tools…mood disor—ders．”可知，新的分子和药理学工具使我们能够证实存在于免疫系统和大脑之间的复杂网络，这个网络可以让免疫系统和大脑相互迅速地发出连续的信号。免疫细胞所产生的化学物质向大脑发出信号，大脑反过来发送化学信号来抑制免疫系统。这些相同的化学信号也影响了人们的行为和对压力的反应。任何方式造成的信息网络中断，无论是遗传还是药物、有毒物质或手术，都会使防御系统预防的下列病症恶化：感染、发炎、自体免疫和相关的情绪障碍。据此可知，免疫系统和大脑相互发出信号，这充分说明了它们在疾病方面的相互作用。A项正确。
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