45.High School English Reading Listening

As any plane passenger will confirm, a crying baby is almost impossible to ignore, no matter how hard you try. Now scientists believe they may have worked out why. A baby’s cry pulls at the heartstrings(扣人心弦) in a way while other cries don’t, researchers found.
　　Researchers found that a baby’s cry can trigger unique emotional responses in the brain, making it impossible for us to ignore them---whether we are parents or not. Other types of cries, including calls of animals in great pain, fail to get the same response---suggesting the brain is programmed to respond specifically to a baby’s cry.
　　A team of Oxford University scientists scanned the brains of 28 men and women as they listened to a variety of calls and cries. After 100 milliseconds two parts of the brain that respond to emotion lit up. Their response to a baby’s cry was particularly strong. The response was seen in both men and women—even if they had no children.
　　Researcher Dr Christine Parsons said, “You might read that men should just notice a baby and step over it and not see it, but it’s not true. There is a special processing in men and women, which makes sense from an evolutionary(演变的) view that both men and women would be responding to these cries.” The study was in people who were not parents, yet they are all responding at 100ms to these particular cries, so this might be a fundamental response present in all of us regardless of parental status.
　　Researcher Katie Young said it may take a bit longer for someone to recognize their own child’s cries because they need to do more “fine-grained analysis”. The team had previously found that our reactions speed up when we hear a baby crying. Adults performed better on computer games when they heard the sound of a baby crying than after they heard recordings of adults crying.
译文：
任何飞机乘客都会证实，无论你如何努力，几乎不可能忽视一个哭泣的婴儿。现在科学家们相信他们可能已经找到了原因。研究人员发现，婴儿的哭声以一种方式牵动着人们的心弦，而其他哭声则不会。
　　研究人员发现，婴儿的哭声可以在大脑中引发独特的情感反应，使我们无法忽视它们--无论我们是否是父母。其他类型的哭声，包括处于巨大痛苦中的动物的叫声，都不能得到同样的反应------这表明大脑被编程为对婴儿的哭声作出特别的反应。
　　牛津大学的一个科学家小组扫描了28名男性和女性的大脑，因为他们听了各种呼叫和哭声。100毫秒后，大脑中对情感有反应的两个部分亮了起来。他们对婴儿的哭声的反应特别强烈。这种反应在男性和女性身上都能看到，即使他们没有孩子。
　　研究员克里斯蒂娜-帕森斯博士说："你可能会读到，男人应该只是注意到一个婴儿，然后跨过它，不看它，但这不是真的。男性和女性有一种特殊的处理方式，从进化的角度来看，男性和女性都会对这些哭声做出反应，这是有道理的。" 这项研究的对象是没有为人父母的人，但他们都对这些特殊的哭声作出了100ms的反应，因此这可能是我们所有人都存在的基本反应，无论父母的身份如何。
　　研究员凯蒂-杨说，人们可能需要更长的时间来识别自己孩子的哭声，因为他们需要做更多的 "细粒度分析"。研究小组以前曾发现，当我们听到婴儿的哭声时，我们的反应会加快。成人在听到婴儿哭泣的声音时，比听到成人哭泣的录音后，在电脑游戏中表现得更好。
重点词汇：
no matter how 不管怎样
worked out 被算出
in a way 在某种程度上 ; 在某一点上
types of 类型 ; 的型态 ; 债券的种类
in great pain 很疼痛
fail to 未能 ; 使…失望
Oxford University 牛津大学
a variety of 各种各样的 ; 种种 ; 形形色色