A study reveals that the brain areas that respond when fear is learned through personal experience are al-so triggered when we see someone else in distress.
In the study, participants watched a short video of a person conditioned to fear a so-called neutral stimulus-something people normally wouldn't fear--paired with something they find naturally aversive (令人讨厌的), in this case an electrical shock. The person in the video watched colored squares on a computer screen: When a blue square appeared, the person received a mild shock; when a yellow square appeared, there was no shock. The participant in the video responded with distress when the blue square appeared—he would blink hard, tense his cheek muscles and move his hand. "So it's clear that he's uncomfortable, he's in distress," said study team member Andreas Olsson of Columbia University. "And he's already in distress before he receives the shock, you see him anticipate receiving the shock." By contrast the participant in the video appeared relaxed when the yellow square popped up,
Participants were told they would take part in a similar experiment, and when presented with the blue square, they responded with fear, anticipating a shock, though they were never actually shocked. "Just by watching, they learn themselves," Olsson explained.
This second learning was reflected in the brain. In previous classical conditioning experiments where a fear is learned firsthand, a part of the brain called the amygdala (扁桃核) has been shown to be critical to the development and expression of fears. The scientists monitored the brain activity of each participant during the experiment. Imaging showed that the amygdala responded both when the subjects watched the video of someone else receiving shocks and when they were presented with the blue squares themselves.
"We found that the amygdala is involved both when you're watching somebody receiving shocks, and when you're expecting to receive shocks later on yourself," Olsson said. So it seems that similar processes in the brain are triggered both when fears are experienced first-hand and when they are observed in others.
In the real world, the finding could explain why some people are afraid of things despite little contact with them. "You learn by observing other people's emotional expressions, and what we are showing is that that can be as effective as having those direct experiences yourself," Olsson said. "That's probably one of the reasons why a lot people are having phobias (恐怖症) of certain kinds of stimuli, such as snakes and spiders."
What's people's response to a neutral stimulus?
A.Normally they are not scared by it.
B.Usually they are seriously scared by it.
C.They feel ridiculous when seeing it.
D.They often feel uncomfortable at it.
According to reports in major news outlets, a study published last week included a startling discovery: the nation's Jewish population is in shrinking. The study, the National Jewish Population Survey, found 5.2 million Jews living in the United States in 2000, a drop of 5 percent, or 300,000 people, since a similar study in 1990. What's truly startling is that the reported decline is not tree. Worse still, the sponsor of the $6 million study, United Jewish Communities, knows it.
Both it and the authors have openly admitted their doubts. They have acknowledged in interviews that the population totals for 2000 and 1990 were reached by different methods and are not directly comparable. The survey itself also cautions readers, in a dauntingly technical appendix, that judgment calls by the researchers may have led to an undercount. When the research director and project director were asked whether the data should be construed to indicate a declining Jewish population, they flatly answered no. In addition, other survey researchers interviewed pointed to other studies with population estimates as high as 6.7 million.
Despite all this, the two figures --5.2 million now, 5.5 million then --are listed by side in the survey, leaving the impression that the population has shrunk. The result, predictably, has been a rash of headlines trumpeting the illusionary decline, in turn touching off jeremiads by rabbis and moralists condemning the religious laxity behind it. Whether out of ideology, ego, incompetence or a combination of all three, the respected charity has invented a crisis.
United Jewish Communities is the coordinating body for a national network of Jewish philanthropies with combined budgets of $2 billion. Its population surveys carry huge weight in shaping community policy. This is not the first time the survey has set off a false alarm. The last one, conducted by a predecessor organization, found that 52 percent of American Jews who married between 1985 and 1990 did so outside the faith. That number was a fabrication produced by including marriages in which neither party was Jewish by anyone's definition, including the researchers.
Its publication created a huge stir, inspiring anguished sermons, books and conferences. It put liberals on the defensive, emboldened conservatives who reject full integration into society and alienated ordinary folks by the increasingly xenophobic tone of Jewish communal culture. The new survey, to its credit, retracts that figure and offers the latest survey has spawned a panic created by the last one.
So why did the organization flawed figures once again? Some scholars who have studied the. survey believe the motivation then came partly out of a desire to shock straying Jews into greater observance. It' s too early to tell if that' s the case this time around. What is clear is the researchers did their job with little regard to how their data could be misconstrued. They used statistical models and question formats that, while internally sound, made the new survey incompatible with the previous one. For example, this time the researchers divided the population of 5.2 million into two groups--"highly involved" Jews and "people of Jewish background"- and posed most questions only to the first group. As a result, most findings about belief and observance refer only to a subgroup of American Jews, making comparisons to the past impossible.
We can' t afford to wait a decade before these figures are revised. The false population decline must be corrected before it further sours communal discourse. The United Jewish Communities owes it to itself and its public to step forward and state plainly what it knows to be true: American Jews are not disappearing.
According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true about the National Jewish Population Survey?
A.It found a decline of 300,000 Jews in ten years.
B.It was carded out by United Jewish Communities.
C.This is the first time United Jewish Communities has made mistakes in the population survey.
D.The reported decline is not reliable.