為大家?guī)砹搜潘奸喿x練習(xí)題： The inevitable and beneficial daydreaming?。正文都做了貼心的注解，文章包含雅思詞匯、例句講解。希望以下內(nèi)容能夠?yàn)橥瑢W(xué)們的雅思備考提供幫助。
Daydreaming has a bad reputation, but neuroscientists(神經(jīng)科學(xué)家)are beginning to realise that a wandering mind is not only typical – it might be beneficial. Sit down, relax and think of nothing. Struggling? There might be a good reason why your mind seems to wander even when you try very hard to switch off: your brain never really rests. And contrary to popular belief(與普遍觀點(diǎn)相反), those idle daydreams might even be beneficial. For years, neuroscientists worked on the assumption(假設(shè);理論)that our brains work hard when given a specific job to do, and switch off when we’re not mentally stimulated(刺激). This is why you’ll read about experiments in which volunteers perform a task – tapping a finger, performing some mental arithmetic, looking at evocative(喚起記憶的)pictures – while their brain is scanned. The scan reveals which parts of the brain become more active during the task and which become less active. In this way it is possible to work out how our brain controls our behaviour. Often the neuroscientists want to explore brain activity for a number of different tasks, so they need a way of getting the brain back to a neutral state(中性狀態(tài)) between tests. This is typically done by asking the person to stare at a simple white cross(十字架)in the middle of a black screen. By thinking about nothing in particular, the theory goes, the brain should basically switch off. There is just one problem: it doesn’t. The first sign that a resting brain is surprisingly active came two decades ago. A student called Bharat Biswal was studying for a PhD at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He was investigating(研究)ways to get a purer signal from a brain scanner, when he noticed that the resting brain isn’t doing nothing.(他正在研究如何從腦部掃描儀中提取一種更純的信號(hào)，卻發(fā)現(xiàn)休息的大腦并不是沒有工作。) Even when people were told to clear their minds or to stare at a cross, activity in the brain continued. Not only that, the brain scans seemed to reveal this activity was actually coordinated(協(xié)調(diào)的). Then in 1997 an analysis incorporating(包含，整合)the results of nine brain scan studies revealed another surprise. Gordon Shulman hoped his analysis would help identify the network that comes to life when people pay attention. But he discovered the opposite – the network which is activated when we do nothing. It would make sense for the brain to become more active when volunteers shifted from resting to performing a task. Instead, Schulman noticed that some areas of the brain consistently(總是，一貫地)became less active when the resting period ended and the activity began. This suggested that while people were lying quietly in the scanner supposedly doing nothing, parts of their brains were in fact more active than when the volunteers were actively performing a task.(這表明，當(dāng)志愿者靜靜地躺在掃描儀中，似乎什么都沒做，其大腦的某些部分反而更活躍，甚至比他們積極完成一項(xiàng)工作時(shí)更活躍。) It took a while for the idea that the brain never rests to catch on(變得流行，被人理解). For years neuroscientists had thought that brain circuits(線路)switched off when they weren’t needed. In 1998 the neuroscientist Marcus Raichle, now one of the leaders in the field, even had a paper rejected by a referee who said “the apparent activity must surely be down to an error in the data”.(神經(jīng)科學(xué)家Marcus Raichle現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)是該領(lǐng)域的領(lǐng)頭人之一，但在1998年，他的一篇論文甚至被審稿人給拒絕了，理由是“大腦看起來很明顯的活動(dòng)狀態(tài)一定是由于數(shù)據(jù)出現(xiàn)錯(cuò)誤”。) Today things are very different. Almost 3000 scientific papers have been published on the topic of the brain’s surprisingly busy “resting state”. Some object to(反對(duì)) this term for the very reason that the brain isn’t resting at all. They prefer instead to talk about the “default mode network”(默認(rèn)狀態(tài)網(wǎng)絡(luò)) – the areas of the brain which remain active while we are apparently idle. The big question is: why is the idling brain so active? There are plenty of theories, but no agreement yet. Maybe different brain areas are simply practising working together. Perhaps the brain is staying active like an idling car, just in case it needs to act suddenly. But it’s possible that those mind wanderings and replays of our day play a vital role in helping us to consolidate(加強(qiáng)) our memories. We know that our dreams seem to play a part in sorting out our memories – now there is evidence that it happens during the day too (in rats, at least). We also know that when the mind is left to wander, it often focuses on the future. We start thinking about what we’re going to eat in the evening or where we’re going to go next week. All three of the chief areas of the brain involved in imagining the future are part of the default mode network. It is almost as though our brain is programmed to contemplate(思考)the future whenever it finds itself unoccupied(空閑的). Moshe Bar from Harvard Medical School thinks there might be a very good reason for that. He believes daydreaming essentially creates memories of events that haven’t happened. This gives us a strange set of “prior experiences” we can draw on to help us decide how to act if the daydreams ever do come to pass. (這就給我們一套奇怪的“前經(jīng)驗(yàn)”，如果白日夢(mèng)真的發(fā)生了，我們可以利用這些經(jīng)驗(yàn)來決定自己采取的行動(dòng)。)For instance, many air travelers have wondered what it might be like to crash. Bar’s idea is that if the plane did actually crash, the memories of all those daydreams from previous flights would come into play and help the passenger decide how to behave. But the resting state is not easy to investigate. As some cognitive psychologists have pointed out, just because a person is lying in a scanner we can’t be sure that they are alone in their thoughts, introspecting(內(nèi)省). They could be thinking about the sounds of the scanner and what’s happening around them. For this reason there are still plenty of unanswered questions about mind wandering. For instance, are the daydreams we experience when we’re trying – and failing – to focus on our work different from the ones we have when we’re deliberately(有意地) trying to switch off?(比如，當(dāng)我們?cè)噲D—或者沒做到—專心工作時(shí)體驗(yàn)到的白日夢(mèng)，與我們刻意要關(guān)閉大腦時(shí)體驗(yàn)的白日夢(mèng)有什么不同?) Progress is being made, though. A study published earlier this year hinted that we might all experience the resting state in a slightly different same way. Researchers conducted a detailed brain scan study of five people who had been trained to recount their mind wanderings in detail every time they heard a computer beep. The researchers found considerable(相當(dāng)大的) differences between each person’s daydreaming thoughts and experiences. In September researchers at the University of Oxford used scans from the Human Connectome Project of 460 people’s brains in a resting state to explore which parts of the brain communicate with each other when we are at rest. Again, the results hinted at personal differences in the resting state – this time linked to life skills and experiences. The strength of the connections between different parts of the brain varies with the strength of a person’s memory, their years of education and their physical endurance.(大腦不同部分之間聯(lián)系的強(qiáng)度取決于個(gè)人記憶力的強(qiáng)度、受教育長短及其身體耐力。) It is as though parts of the brain remain connected when our mind wanders just in case we need them to do something. Scientifically, the discovery that the brain is never truly at rest could help make sense of a longstanding mystery: why does the brain uses 20% of body’s energy when the activities we know it performs should need only about 5%?Marcus Raichle has labelled the missing 15% the brain’s “dark energy” – resting state activity might account for some of this discrepancy(差異，缺口).(為什么大腦使用了身體能量的20%，而大腦完成我們所知的活動(dòng)僅需要5%?Marcus Raichle將那消失的15%稱為大腦的“黑能量”—休息狀態(tài)下的活動(dòng)也許能部分解釋這15%的缺口。) The discovery of the resting state also has the potential to change the way we each feel about our brains. We know how hard it is to empty our minds. We know how our minds have a frustrating tendency to wander even when we don’t want them to. But the emerging picture suggests these quirks(怪癖)might actually be beneficial – even if they do prevent us from finishing a task in time to meet a deadline. In other words, perhaps it’s time to celebrate the virtues of an idle mind. (換句話說，我們也許該歌頌一下胡思亂想的美德了。) Vocabulary Neuroscientist 神經(jīng)科學(xué)家 Popular belief 通行的觀點(diǎn) Assumption 假設(shè)，前提 Stimulate 刺激 Evocative 召喚的;引起回憶的 Neutral 中性的 Cross 十字架 Investigate 研究;探究 Coordinate 協(xié)調(diào) Incorporate 整合;納入 Consistently 總是;一貫 Catch on 被人接受，變得流行 Object to 反對(duì) Consolidate 加強(qiáng);鞏固 Contemplate 思考 Unoccupied 空閑的 Introspect 內(nèi)省 Deliberately 刻意地 Considerable 相當(dāng)大的 Discrepancy 差異;缺口 Quirk 怪癖 本文對(duì)雅思寫作的啟示 這篇文章可以分為三個(gè)部分：第一部分提出我們休息時(shí)，大腦其實(shí)在活動(dòng);第二部分嘗試對(duì)這種現(xiàn)象予以解釋;第三部分認(rèn)為這種白日夢(mèng)可能有好處(你能劃出這三部分的位置嗎?)。請(qǐng)看第一部分作者如何引用論據(jù)來論證與常規(guī)觀點(diǎn)相悖的看法;第二部分如何提出解釋;第三部分如何闡述未經(jīng)證實(shí)的好處。以下句式可以模仿： 1. Contrary to popular belief, those idle daydreams might even be beneficial. 與普遍觀點(diǎn)不同的是，這些無所事事的白日夢(mèng)甚至可能是有好處的。 2. The first sign that a resting brain is surprisingly active came two decades ago. 休息的大腦出奇地活躍，這個(gè)說法首次出現(xiàn)在20年前。 Then in 1997 an analysis incorporating(包含，整合) the results of nine brain scan studies revealed another surprise. 1997年，一份整合了9項(xiàng)大腦掃描研究結(jié)果的分析揭示出另一些讓人意想不到的結(jié)論。 Today things are very different. Almost 3000 scientific papers have been published on the topic of the brain’s surprisingly busy “resting state”. 今天情況大不相同了，已經(jīng)發(fā)表了大約3000篇科學(xué)論文，討論大腦的這種令人驚奇的繁忙“休息狀態(tài)”。 3. The big question is: why is the idling brain so active? There are plenty of theories, but no agreement yet. 重要的問題是：為什么空閑的大腦如此活躍?有很多理論，但還沒有定論。 4.The discovery of the resting state also has the potential to change the way we each feel about our brains. 關(guān)于空閑狀態(tài)的發(fā)現(xiàn)還有可能改變我們對(duì)大腦的感覺方式。
Daydreaming has a bad reputation, but neuroscientists(神經(jīng)科學(xué)家)are beginning to realise that a wandering mind is not only typical – it might be beneficial. Sit down, relax and think of nothing. Struggling? There might be a good reason why your mind seems to wander even when you try very hard to switch off: your brain never really rests. And contrary to popular belief(與普遍觀點(diǎn)相反), those idle daydreams might even be beneficial. For years, neuroscientists worked on the assumption(假設(shè);理論)that our brains work hard when given a specific job to do, and switch off when we’re not mentally stimulated(刺激). This is why you’ll read about experiments in which volunteers perform a task – tapping a finger, performing some mental arithmetic, looking at evocative(喚起記憶的)pictures – while their brain is scanned. The scan reveals which parts of the brain become more active during the task and which become less active. In this way it is possible to work out how our brain controls our behaviour. Often the neuroscientists want to explore brain activity for a number of different tasks, so they need a way of getting the brain back to a neutral state(中性狀態(tài)) between tests. This is typically done by asking the person to stare at a simple white cross(十字架)in the middle of a black screen. By thinking about nothing in particular, the theory goes, the brain should basically switch off. There is just one problem: it doesn’t. The first sign that a resting brain is surprisingly active came two decades ago. A student called Bharat Biswal was studying for a PhD at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He was investigating(研究)ways to get a purer signal from a brain scanner, when he noticed that the resting brain isn’t doing nothing.(他正在研究如何從腦部掃描儀中提取一種更純的信號(hào)，卻發(fā)現(xiàn)休息的大腦并不是沒有工作。) Even when people were told to clear their minds or to stare at a cross, activity in the brain continued. Not only that, the brain scans seemed to reveal this activity was actually coordinated(協(xié)調(diào)的). Then in 1997 an analysis incorporating(包含，整合)the results of nine brain scan studies revealed another surprise. Gordon Shulman hoped his analysis would help identify the network that comes to life when people pay attention. But he discovered the opposite – the network which is activated when we do nothing. It would make sense for the brain to become more active when volunteers shifted from resting to performing a task. Instead, Schulman noticed that some areas of the brain consistently(總是，一貫地)became less active when the resting period ended and the activity began. This suggested that while people were lying quietly in the scanner supposedly doing nothing, parts of their brains were in fact more active than when the volunteers were actively performing a task.(這表明，當(dāng)志愿者靜靜地躺在掃描儀中，似乎什么都沒做，其大腦的某些部分反而更活躍，甚至比他們積極完成一項(xiàng)工作時(shí)更活躍。) It took a while for the idea that the brain never rests to catch on(變得流行，被人理解). For years neuroscientists had thought that brain circuits(線路)switched off when they weren’t needed. In 1998 the neuroscientist Marcus Raichle, now one of the leaders in the field, even had a paper rejected by a referee who said “the apparent activity must surely be down to an error in the data”.(神經(jīng)科學(xué)家Marcus Raichle現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)是該領(lǐng)域的領(lǐng)頭人之一，但在1998年，他的一篇論文甚至被審稿人給拒絕了，理由是“大腦看起來很明顯的活動(dòng)狀態(tài)一定是由于數(shù)據(jù)出現(xiàn)錯(cuò)誤”。) Today things are very different. Almost 3000 scientific papers have been published on the topic of the brain’s surprisingly busy “resting state”. Some object to(反對(duì)) this term for the very reason that the brain isn’t resting at all. They prefer instead to talk about the “default mode network”(默認(rèn)狀態(tài)網(wǎng)絡(luò)) – the areas of the brain which remain active while we are apparently idle. The big question is: why is the idling brain so active? There are plenty of theories, but no agreement yet. Maybe different brain areas are simply practising working together. Perhaps the brain is staying active like an idling car, just in case it needs to act suddenly. But it’s possible that those mind wanderings and replays of our day play a vital role in helping us to consolidate(加強(qiáng)) our memories. We know that our dreams seem to play a part in sorting out our memories – now there is evidence that it happens during the day too (in rats, at least). We also know that when the mind is left to wander, it often focuses on the future. We start thinking about what we’re going to eat in the evening or where we’re going to go next week. All three of the chief areas of the brain involved in imagining the future are part of the default mode network. It is almost as though our brain is programmed to contemplate(思考)the future whenever it finds itself unoccupied(空閑的). Moshe Bar from Harvard Medical School thinks there might be a very good reason for that. He believes daydreaming essentially creates memories of events that haven’t happened. This gives us a strange set of “prior experiences” we can draw on to help us decide how to act if the daydreams ever do come to pass. (這就給我們一套奇怪的“前經(jīng)驗(yàn)”，如果白日夢(mèng)真的發(fā)生了，我們可以利用這些經(jīng)驗(yàn)來決定自己采取的行動(dòng)。)For instance, many air travelers have wondered what it might be like to crash. Bar’s idea is that if the plane did actually crash, the memories of all those daydreams from previous flights would come into play and help the passenger decide how to behave. But the resting state is not easy to investigate. As some cognitive psychologists have pointed out, just because a person is lying in a scanner we can’t be sure that they are alone in their thoughts, introspecting(內(nèi)省). They could be thinking about the sounds of the scanner and what’s happening around them. For this reason there are still plenty of unanswered questions about mind wandering. For instance, are the daydreams we experience when we’re trying – and failing – to focus on our work different from the ones we have when we’re deliberately(有意地) trying to switch off?(比如，當(dāng)我們?cè)噲D—或者沒做到—專心工作時(shí)體驗(yàn)到的白日夢(mèng)，與我們刻意要關(guān)閉大腦時(shí)體驗(yàn)的白日夢(mèng)有什么不同?) Progress is being made, though. A study published earlier this year hinted that we might all experience the resting state in a slightly different same way. Researchers conducted a detailed brain scan study of five people who had been trained to recount their mind wanderings in detail every time they heard a computer beep. The researchers found considerable(相當(dāng)大的) differences between each person’s daydreaming thoughts and experiences. In September researchers at the University of Oxford used scans from the Human Connectome Project of 460 people’s brains in a resting state to explore which parts of the brain communicate with each other when we are at rest. Again, the results hinted at personal differences in the resting state – this time linked to life skills and experiences. The strength of the connections between different parts of the brain varies with the strength of a person’s memory, their years of education and their physical endurance.(大腦不同部分之間聯(lián)系的強(qiáng)度取決于個(gè)人記憶力的強(qiáng)度、受教育長短及其身體耐力。) It is as though parts of the brain remain connected when our mind wanders just in case we need them to do something. Scientifically, the discovery that the brain is never truly at rest could help make sense of a longstanding mystery: why does the brain uses 20% of body’s energy when the activities we know it performs should need only about 5%?Marcus Raichle has labelled the missing 15% the brain’s “dark energy” – resting state activity might account for some of this discrepancy(差異，缺口).(為什么大腦使用了身體能量的20%，而大腦完成我們所知的活動(dòng)僅需要5%?Marcus Raichle將那消失的15%稱為大腦的“黑能量”—休息狀態(tài)下的活動(dòng)也許能部分解釋這15%的缺口。) The discovery of the resting state also has the potential to change the way we each feel about our brains. We know how hard it is to empty our minds. We know how our minds have a frustrating tendency to wander even when we don’t want them to. But the emerging picture suggests these quirks(怪癖)might actually be beneficial – even if they do prevent us from finishing a task in time to meet a deadline. In other words, perhaps it’s time to celebrate the virtues of an idle mind. (換句話說，我們也許該歌頌一下胡思亂想的美德了。) Vocabulary Neuroscientist 神經(jīng)科學(xué)家 Popular belief 通行的觀點(diǎn) Assumption 假設(shè)，前提 Stimulate 刺激 Evocative 召喚的;引起回憶的 Neutral 中性的 Cross 十字架 Investigate 研究;探究 Coordinate 協(xié)調(diào) Incorporate 整合;納入 Consistently 總是;一貫 Catch on 被人接受，變得流行 Object to 反對(duì) Consolidate 加強(qiáng);鞏固 Contemplate 思考 Unoccupied 空閑的 Introspect 內(nèi)省 Deliberately 刻意地 Considerable 相當(dāng)大的 Discrepancy 差異;缺口 Quirk 怪癖 本文對(duì)雅思寫作的啟示 這篇文章可以分為三個(gè)部分：第一部分提出我們休息時(shí)，大腦其實(shí)在活動(dòng);第二部分嘗試對(duì)這種現(xiàn)象予以解釋;第三部分認(rèn)為這種白日夢(mèng)可能有好處(你能劃出這三部分的位置嗎?)。請(qǐng)看第一部分作者如何引用論據(jù)來論證與常規(guī)觀點(diǎn)相悖的看法;第二部分如何提出解釋;第三部分如何闡述未經(jīng)證實(shí)的好處。以下句式可以模仿： 1. Contrary to popular belief, those idle daydreams might even be beneficial. 與普遍觀點(diǎn)不同的是，這些無所事事的白日夢(mèng)甚至可能是有好處的。 2. The first sign that a resting brain is surprisingly active came two decades ago. 休息的大腦出奇地活躍，這個(gè)說法首次出現(xiàn)在20年前。 Then in 1997 an analysis incorporating(包含，整合) the results of nine brain scan studies revealed another surprise. 1997年，一份整合了9項(xiàng)大腦掃描研究結(jié)果的分析揭示出另一些讓人意想不到的結(jié)論。 Today things are very different. Almost 3000 scientific papers have been published on the topic of the brain’s surprisingly busy “resting state”. 今天情況大不相同了，已經(jīng)發(fā)表了大約3000篇科學(xué)論文，討論大腦的這種令人驚奇的繁忙“休息狀態(tài)”。 3. The big question is: why is the idling brain so active? There are plenty of theories, but no agreement yet. 重要的問題是：為什么空閑的大腦如此活躍?有很多理論，但還沒有定論。 4.The discovery of the resting state also has the potential to change the way we each feel about our brains. 關(guān)于空閑狀態(tài)的發(fā)現(xiàn)還有可能改變我們對(duì)大腦的感覺方式。