题型：语法填空（语篇） 题类：模拟题 难易度：困难
贵州省遵义航天高级中学2017届高三第十一次模拟(5月)英语考试试卷
A professor stood before his class of twenty senior organic biology students and was about to hand the final exam papers.
“I want to say that has been a pleasure teaching you this term. I know you've worked (extreme) hard and many of you are off to medical school after summer. I know no one wants to get their GPA(平均成绩) (mess) up because they might have been celebrating this week. Anyone who prefers not to take the final exam today (receive) a 'B' for the course.”
The students were filled with (happy) as they got up, walked to the front of the class, and accepted the professor's offer. As last taker left the room, the professor looked at the handful of (remain) students and asked, “Anyone else? This is your last chance.”
One final student rose up and chose not to take part in the final. The professor closed the door and checked who were still in the classroom.
“I'm glad to see you believe in (you),” he said. “You all get 'A's.”
How many have taken the easy way out? The short road, the easy path the light load all lead to lower grades in school of life.
“HELL is a city much like London,” said Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1819. Modern academics agree. Last year Dutch researchers showed that city dwellers (居民) have a 21% higher risk of suffering from anxiety disorders than do their calmer rural countrymen, and a 39% higher risk of suffering from mood disorders. But exactly how the inner workings of the urban and rural minds cause this difference has remained unclear—until now. A study just published in Nature by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg and his colleagues has used a scanning technique called functional magnetic-resonance imaging (机能性磁共振成像，简称fMRI) to examine the brains of city dwellers and countrymen when they are under stress.
In Dr Meyer-Lindenberg's first experiment, participants lying with their heads in a scanner took maths tests that they were bound to fail (the researchers had designed success rates to be just 25-40%). To make the experience still more embarrassing, the team provided negative feedback through headphones, all the while checking participants for indications of stress, such as high blood pressure.
The city people's general mental health did not differ from that of the rural countrymen. However, their brains dealt with the stress caused by the experimenters in different ways. These differences were noticeable in two regions: the amygdalas (杏仁核) and the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (前扣带皮层，简称pACC).
People living in the countryside had the lowest levels of activity in their amygdalas. Those living in towns had higher levels. City dwellers had the highest. In the case of the pACC, however, what mattered was not where someone was living now, but where he or she was brought up. The more urban a person's childhood, the more active his pACC, regardless of where he was dwelling at the time of the experiment.
The amygdalas thus seem to respond to the here-and-now while the pACC is programmed early on, and does not react in the same, flexible way as the amygdalas. Second-to-second changes in its activity might, though, be expected to be connected with changes in the amygdalas, because of its role in regulating them. fMRI allows such connections to be measured.
In the cases of those brought up in the countryside, regardless of where they now live, the connections were as expected. For those brought up in cities, however, these connections broke down. The regulatory mechanism of the native urbanite, in other words, seems to be out of order.
Dr Meyer-Lindenberg and his team conducted several more experiments to check their findings. They asked participants to complete more maths tests—and also tests in which they were mentally ups and downs—while investigators scolded them about their performance. The results matched those of the first test. They also studied another group of volunteers, who were given stress-free tasks to complete. These experiments showed no activity in either the amygdalas or the pACC, suggesting that the earlier results were indeed the result of social stress rather than mental effort.
As is usually the case in studies of this sort, the sample size was small and the result showed an association, rather than a definite, causal relationship. That association is, nevertheless, interesting. Living in cities brings many benefits, but Dr Meyer-Lindenberg's work suggests that Shelley and his fellow Romantics had at least half a point.
Title: Do urban brains behave differently from rural ones?
Purpose of the research | The research was conducted to explain why city dwellers are more likely to {#blank#}1{#/blank#} serious disorders than countrymen. | |
Process of the research | Design of the research | The researchers made the participants take difficult maths tests and provided negative feedback, which served as the source of {#blank#}2{#/blank#} for the participants. Meanwhile the researchers scanned their brains and got indications by a scanning technique called fMRI . |
Findings of the research | The activity level in the amygdalas is highest in city dwellers, {#blank#}3{#/blank#} by those living in towns and the countryside. Besides, the amygdalas respond {#blank#}4{#/blank#}. The activity level of a person's pACC, regulating the amygdalas, is {#blank#}5{#/blank#} by the place where he was raised, and the pACC works when a person is at a {#blank#}6{#/blank#} age. The association between the amygdalas and the pACC depends on a person's living {#blank#}7{#/blank#}. | |
{#blank#}8{#/blank#} on the findings | Several more experiments were carried out with {#blank#}9{#/blank#} results. | |
Conclusion of the research | It is the social stress rather than mental effort that leads to mental disorders, so living in cities also brings some {#blank#}10{#/blank#}. | |
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