【Native Speaker每日综合训练—43系列】【43-17】科技 Brain

Cassidy大洁洁

内容：Cassidy大洁洁 编辑：Cassidy大洁洁

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Part I: Speaker

Childhood Stress Decreases Size of Brain Regions
August 16, 2014 |By Christie Nicholson

Children who experience neglect, abuse and poverty have a tougher time as adults than do well-cared-for kids. Now there’s evidence that such stress can actually change the size of brain structures responsible for learning, memory and processing emotion. The finding is in the journal Biological Psychiatry. [Jamie L. Hanson et al, Behavioral Problems After Early Life Stress: Contributions of the Hippocampus and Amygdala]

Researchers took images of the brains of 12-year-olds who had suffered either physical abuse or neglect or had grown up poor. From the images the scientists were able to measure the size of the amygdala and hippocampus—two structures involved in emotional processing and memory. And they compared the sizes of these structures with those of 12-year-old children who were raised in middle-class families and had not been abused. And they found that the stressed children had significantly smaller amygdalas and hippocampuses than did the kids from the more nurturing environments.

Early stress has been associated with depression, anxiety, cancer and lack of career success later on in adulthood. This study on the sizes of brain regions may offer physiological clues to why what happens to toddlers can have such a profound impact decades later.

Source: Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/childhood-stress-decreases-size-of-brain-regions/

[Rephrase 1]

Cassidy大洁洁

Part II: Speed

Can sleep loss affect your brain size?
Date: September 3, 2014
Source:American Academy of Neurology (AAN)

[Time 2]
Sleep difficulties may be linked to faster rates of decline in brain volume, according to a study published in the September 3, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Sleep has been proposed to be "the brain's housekeeper," serving to repair and restore the brain.

The study included 147 adults 20 and 84 years old. Researchers examined the link between sleep difficulties, such as having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep at night, and brain volume.

All participants underwent two MRI brain scans, an average of 3.5 years apart, before completing a questionnaire about their sleep habits.

A total of 35 percent of the participants met the criteria for poor sleep quality, scoring an average of 8.5 out of 21 points on the sleep assessment. The assessment looked at how long people slept, how long it took them to fall asleep at night, use of sleeping medications, and other factors.

The study found that sleep difficulties were linked with a more rapid decline in brain volume over the course of the study in widespread brain regions, including within frontal, temporal and parietal areas.

The results were more pronounced in people over 60 years old.

"It is not yet known whether poor sleep quality is a cause or consequence of changes in brain structure," said study author Claire E. Sexton, DPhil, with the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. "There are effective treatments for sleep problems, so future research needs to test whether improving people's quality of sleep could slow the rate of brain volume loss. If that is the case, improving people's sleep habits could be an important way to improve brain health."
[281 words]

Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140903161600.htm


Movies synchronize brains: Brain activity patterns show remarkable similarities across different people
Date:April 7, 2014
Source:Aalto University

[Time 3]
When we watch a movie, our brains react to it immediately in a way similar to brains of other people. Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have succeeded in developing a method fast enough to observe immediate changes in the function of the brain even when watching a movie.

By employing movies it was possible to investigate the function of the human brain in experimental conditions that are close to natural. Traditionally, in neuroscience research, simple stimuli, such as checkerboard patterns or single images, have been used.

Viewing a movie creates multilevel changes in the brain function. Despite the complexity of the stimulus, the elicited brain activity patterns show remarkable similarities across different people -- even at the time scale of fractions of seconds.

"The analysis revealed important similarities between brain signals of different people during movie viewing. These similar kinds or synchronized signals were found in brain areas that are connected with the early-stage processing of visual stimuli, detection of movement and persons, motor coordination and cognitive functions. The results imply that the contents of the movie affected certain brain functions of the subjects in a similar manner," explains Kaisu Lankinen the findings of her doctoral research.

So far, studies in this field have mainly been based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, given the superior temporal resolution, within milliseconds, magnetoencephalography (MEG) is able to provide more complete picture of the fast brain processes. With the help of MEG and new analysis methods, investigation of significantly faster brain processes is possible and it enables detection of brain activity in frequencies higher than before.

In the novel analysis, brain imaging was combined with machine-learning methodology, with which signals of a similar form were mined from the brain data.
[289 words]

Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140407090615.htm


Study using unique 3D lab cultures appears to confirm how Alzheimer’s begins in brain
By Fredrick Kunkle October 13

[Time 4]
A group of New England scientists say they have confirmed what Alzheimer’s disease researchers have long theorized but had been unable to prove: the brain-killing illness is caused by the deposit of a protein in the brain, known as beta amyloid, that triggers a devastating series of dementia-causing events.

Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital also identified an enzyme that plays a key role in the progression of the disease — thereby offering a target for pharmacy-makers to develop a drug that would halt the neurodegenerative disease.

Their results were published online Sunday in the journal Nature.

The team also arrived at their conclusion using an innovative laboratory culture they dubbed “Alzheimer’s-in-a-dish.” Instead of cultivating single-layer cultures of test cells in two-dimensional liquid-based systems, the team grew multiple-layered cultures of neural stem cells in gelatin-like, three-dimensional models that more closely resemble the brain.

The scientists used the 3D cultures to answer a simple question: does beta amyloid actually cause Alzheimer’s disease?

For some time since Bavarian doctor Alois Alzheimer first identified the condition that bears his name, scientists have known that the distinguishing features of Alzheimer’s disease were the presence of two protein variants: amyloid beta, which forms insoluble plaques, and tau, which creates neurofibrillary tangles.

Scientists have also known that both must be present for the symptoms of Alzheimer’s — cognitive impairment, loss of memory and inability to perform certain motor activities — to appear.

But it wasn’t clear whether beta amyloid caused the tangles as some, beginning at least with George Glenner in the 1980s, hypothesized or whether the two were simply associated with each other.

Rudolph Tanzi, director of the genetics and aging research unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, said his team’s research offers the first definitive proof that Glenner and others were correct that beta amyloid is the cause.

“The question was does the amyloid really cause the tangles, because the tangles are what kill the nerve cells? And this is the first proof of concept in a human nerve cell system that it does,” Tanzi said in a telephone interview.
[342 words]

[Time 5]
Tanzi’s team obtained their results using an innovative approach to laboratory cultures. Tanzi and Doo Yeon Kim, the paper’s co-author, believed that standard two-dimensional cultures had been inadequate environments for growing cells that thrive in the 3D brain. So the team used a 3D culture with neural stem cells that carried variants in two genes — the amyloid beta precursor and presenilin 1 — that are found in early onset, familial Alzheimer’s.

The approach worked faster and more efficiently even than experiments using animals, he said. Previous experiments using mice with genetic predispositions to Alzheimer’s, for example, produced amyloid beta plaques in their brains and some behavioral abnormalities. But they were not successful in creating the neurofibrillary tangles, Tanzi said. Other experimental models created the tangles, but not the plaques.

The 3D models used by Tanzi’s team created both.

“The brain is a gel. The brain is three pounds of actual, gelatin-like material. So let’s grow them in a gelatin-like material,” he said. “And now two things happen. The neurons can grow in a three-dimensional manner, and when they secrete amyloid beta protein like they do in the brain, it stays around. It gets secreted, but it actually diffuses very slowly through Jello instead of liquid.”

The team also conducted an experiment to see whether blocking an enzyme previously implicated in the production of tau protein tangles could interrupt their formation. Knowing that the tau variant found in tangles is characterized by an excess of phosphate molecules, the team focused on inhibiting the action of an enzyme called GSK3-beta — which was known to phosphorylate tau in human neurons — and succeeded in preventing the formation of tangles.

“Sure enough, we could get the cultures to make gobs of amyloid, but no tangles,” Tanzi said.

Tanzi said their new system offers the hope of revolutionizing drug discovery for other neurodegenerative disorders.
[309 words]

Source: The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-using-unique-3d-lab-cultures-appears-to-confirm-how-alzheimers-begins-in-brain/2014/10/13/6f03a5ba-50ba-11e4-babe-e91da079cb8a_story.html


This Is Your Brain on Your Favorite Song
By Marissa Fessenden
August 28, 2014

[Time 6]
Some prefer the twangs of the steel guitar in country, others the soaring arias of opera. Yet despite individual preferences, people’s favorite tunes generate strikingly similar brain activity patterns and can even enhance their creative ability, according to new research.
We already know that emotional connections to music can be strong, but exactly how favorite melodies influence brain patterns is an ongoing area of discovery.

The researchers scanned the brains of 21 young adults using an MRI machine while piping in music recordings. Each person listened to a genre they liked, one they disliked and their favorite song.

By separating out the patterns that were related to the music’s beat or lyrics, the researchers found the underlying changes in brain activity related to enjoying a favorite song.

A person's preferred music enhances connections between different regions of the brain, a pattern called the default mode network (DMN), the researchers report. This network is associated with introspection, self-awareness, mind-wandering and possibly imagination.

When the DMN is activated, another network, the task-positive network (TPN)—which is involved in goal-oriented activity—is shut down. The two states can be thought of as focus on the outside world (the TPN) and focus on inner thoughts (the DMN). Earlier this month, another research group figured out how to switch between these two modes in mice.

Certain brain disorders seem to involve trouble with activating one mode or another or with switching between the two. For example, since people with autism seem to have problems with DMN activity, the new study’s authors suggest that music therapy may help.

More work needs to be done to investigate the connection between music and mental states before we know if music can help people with autism, but for now, know that the frisson of happy feelings you get when you listen to your favorite song has basis in biology.
[310 words]

Source: Smithsonian
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/your-brain-your-favorite-song-180952511/

Cassidy大洁洁

Part III: Obstacle

Why Brain Size Doesn't Correlate With Intelligence
By Alexandra Horowitz
December 2013

[Paraphrase 7]
You are a child who grew up.

The inevitability of a child’s growth is both celebrated and mourned. Under normal circumstances, parents can do little but stand back and watch as shoe sizes climb, squawks become babbles become words become speech (which soon becomes back talk) and a child’s knowledge of math, to say nothing of her texting dexterity, outpaces her parents’.

For human beings, growth in childhood leads to maturity, a relative concept: mature with respect to what?, one might ask of a teenager. Biologically, growth is the destiny of all successful organisms. But that growth comes in myriad possible forms—growth from zygote to neonate to adult, growth in size or stature, growth of an entire species. Another form, growth in brain size, has long been linked to success.

A recent study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B appears to suggest that, in a sampling of wild animals, average brain size—measured from craniums of museum specimens collected from urban and rural animals over the last century or so—is correlated with living around people. Both the city mouse (of the white-footed variety) and city vole (of the meadow variety) had larger cranial capacities than their rural cousins. Whether it was the more cerebral rodents that moved into the city, or whether the species adjusted to the novel challenges of an urban environment by growing their brains over generations, isn’t known. Regardless, headlines proclaimed: “City Mice Smarter Than Country Mice.”

Such news excites us humans, who take pride in our big brains. The notion that brain size indicates cognitive prowess is, of course, flattering for us. The further notion that cities house the bigger-brained—why, that’s hard for the urban sensibility to ignore.

What the headlines didn’t crow about was the researchers’ finding that only two of the ten investigated mammals had bigger brains in their urban variants. And the cranial capacity of two shrew species (short-tailed and masked) and two bats (little brown and big brown) grew bigger over the decades in rural, but not urban, settings.

People have long been tempted to link brain size and cognition. The intuitive notion that a “big brain” means “more intelligent” was first threatened some time ago, when we discovered animals with larger brains than ours: elephants and whales. Sure as we were of humankind’s superior intelligence, we still felt the need to prevail, so we gamely parried: Perhaps it is the brain size relative to body size that makes our brains the biggest. Though humans come out well there, too, this measure is biased toward birds and other small animals that have relatively large brains for their bodies. After more deliberation, scientists finally offered up the so-called “encephalization quotient”: brain size relative to the expected brain size in related taxa. On top: humans. Phew.

Consider, though, the strange case of that growing child. Every infant’s brain develops through a period of synaptogenesis—wanton proliferation of synapses, which are the connections between neurons—in the first year or so of life. But one could argue that it is when this intense brain growth ends that the real growth of the child qua individual begins. The next phase of brain development occurs in large part through an increase in synaptic pruning: paring of those connections that are not useful for perceiving, considering or understanding the world the child is facing. In this sense, it’s by downsizing that an individual’s brain is born.

Brain size, or the size of brain parts, can be a reasonable indicator of skill, to be sure. In individuals with sensory deprivation other sensory inputs take over the cortical area lying dormant. In the case of blindness, auditory or tactile somatosensory areas may grow in size, and hearing or touching sensitivity will improve accordingly. Dramatic as that compensatory growth may be, in the end the correlation between brain size and brain function is fraught.

Consider the humble dog, Canis familiaris. The brain of a wolf-size dog is about 30 percent smaller than that of an actual gray wolf, its ancestor. Has the dog become less smart since it went its own evolutionary way thousands of years ago? Judge for yourself: When the mere gaze from the dewy eyes of a member of this species causes you to get up from the couch, repair to the refrigerator and retrieve a hunk of cheese for your charge—well, you tell me who is smarter.
[736 words]

Source: Smithsonia
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-brain-size-doesnt-correlate-with-intelligence-180947627/?no-ist

gnxsxm

1’04

1’17

1’34

1’27

1’24

3’47

Headline draws the conclusion that citymice smarter than rural mice by the experiment which found out city mice havebigger cranial capacity than rural mice do. Although the conclusion excites ussince we are so proud of our big brains, the correlation between brain size andcognition is not as firm as we suppose.

Firstly, people believed that species whichhave bigger brains evolve better and are more intelligent. However, this hypothesiswas defeated by the fact that whale and elephant have much more bigger brains. Then,another assumption that what really matters is the brain size relative to bodysize was raised. Unfortunately, the existence of bird, which has really bigbrain compared to its size, makes the theory unreliable. At last, scientistsproposed that what decides our intelligence is the brain size relative to expectedbrain size in certain species, theory that finally satisfies us but unsound.

Brain size do represents something. For example,people who suffer from sensory deprivation will develop somatosensory areasbigger. But still, the bigger brain size doesn’t definitely reflect better intelligenceand evolvement.

MAGGIEHE1993

谢谢大洁洁~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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time2: Researchers have found that sleep difficulties may be linked to faster rates of decline in brain volume.
time3: Researchers have found that different people react to a movie in a similar pattern. More advanced technologies
       are used to give a full picture of brain activities.
time4: Researchers have confirmed that the disease Alzheimer is caused by the deposit of a protein known as beta amyloid.
time5: Researchers have detected how beta amyloid leads to the development of Alzheimer in the brain. Tanzi also said that
       their new system offers the hope of revolutionizing drug discovery for other neurodegenerative disorders.
time6: Researchers have found that when you listen to music that you like, the connections between different parts of the
       brain will be enhanced.
Obstacle: 5min 27"
       The brain size doesn't correlate with intelligence.
       Introduction of the topic.
       Growth in brain size has long been linked to success.
       A study suggests that city mouse are clever than their country cousins because they live more close to human. This
       fact made our human be proud of our brain size and intelligence.
       Scientists have tried using different theories to explain why human are more intelligent than other animals with
       bigger brains or larger proportions of brain to bodies. The author thinks the explanations are unsound.
       The author uses the development of human size to prove that the development of intelligence does not correlate with
       the growth of brain size.
       The author suggests that the brain size or the size of brain can be a reasonable indicator of skill to be sure.
       The author uses the example of a species of dog to indicate that a smaller size of brain than before does not
       necessarily mean the degeneration of intelligence.
最后一段这个作者好搞siao啊=。=

嗯哼哼哼

02'15
03'06
02'58
02'55
02'24

cyndichiang

Speaker
Children who suffered from neglect,abuse or sth stressful have smaller-size parts in brain which are related to memory,processing or emotion than normal children's ,leading to profound impact decades later.

Obstacle:
Refutation to the claim that the bigger the brain size,the more intellengent a person is.
Brain size is conneected to sensory deprivation rather than sensory input and thus some unecessary parts are downsized as child grows.

cyndichiang

Speaker
Children who suffered from stress caused by neglect or abuse have smaller-size parts in brain which are related to processing and memory than normal adopted children have,leading to profound impact decades later

Obstacle: 4'25''
Refutation to the claim that the bigger the brain size is ,the more intelligent a person is .
Evidence shows that the brain size is virtually connected to the sensory deprivation rather sensory input, which means unecessary parts in brain are downsized when child grows

samantha12

Speaking
A question-- a experiment with 2 groups, one for control group, the other for experimental group-- profound extend.
Reading 2 01:40.80
An outcome has been stated, to prove this result the scientists did an experiment with data recorded. The experiment has confirmed the result to be true. Then a further research could started.
Reading 3 02:06.87
Brian's reaction to movie. Having known that different people have similar processes in brain, the scientists want to know how similar they are? Using the MEG technology, the scientists can build a picture about the brain activity. The more advanced the technology is, the more accurate the results will be.
Reading 4 02:23.27
A well known but not testified scientific result has been settled with an solution. What's the outcome of those scientists ans how they arranged their experiment? Then a specific question has been brought out. And the corresponding hypothesis has been approved.
Reading 5 02:06.01
How the scientists arrange their experiment? What's the advantage previous experiments lack? Based on the new experimental method, a promising result has been obtained. With the usage of this kind of technology, the scientists promoted another question, in order to halt the devastating physical outcome, which stimuli should be controlled? The corresponding result has been obtained.
Reading 6 02:03.47
How brain reacts with music? Despite some widely known knowledge, an experiment has been settled. With the promising results coming from this experiment, scientists wish to apply these outcomes into medical usage.
Obstacle 05:41.87
Use an example to introduce the topic we concerned about-- the brain mature. Using a result form an experiment, we get a false inference, for there's another experiment leading to countering outcomes. In order to prove our human beings are the most intelligent species in the world, some ridiculous theories have been prompted. In the end, the author obtained a really different conclusion-- there's no correlation between intelligence with brain size, the author using an fact to confirm it.  

Stefan00

Time 2: 1’31  study shows that sleep loss could cause decline in brain volume. But whether that loss will affect the brain structure we don’t know.
Time 3: 1’56 By detecting activities in brain when volunteers are watching movies, scientists find that those volunteers experience same pattern. some technologies would help the research.
Time 4: 2’00 what cause the A, some scientists hypothesized that the beta was the cause triggering the tangle. That proofed right.
Time 5: 1’49 By using the 3D method, scientists could have further understanding of the disease and it would help revolutionize the drug which is used for curing disorder diseases.
Time 6: 2’09 Study shows that listening to the favorite songs evoke similar pattern in people’s brains. Research on tow models and switch between will help cure disease. Although we don’t know how exactly.
obstacle: 4’42 A discuss about the link between size of brain and intelligence.