5.30托福口语跟读训练

Angela_passions · 发表于 2014-5-30 09:51:55

From 听力文摘：心情可以影响嗅觉。（P.S，人体好奇妙）

Our sense of smell can have a large impact on how we thinkand feel. But did you know that mood can affect how we smell?

According to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison, feeling anxious canmake typically neutral smells seem repugnant.

The study involved a dozen volunteers who rated a panel of neutral smells. Then, while inside anMRI machine, subjects were made to feel anxious with disturbing images of car crashes and grislywar scenes.

They were then asked to rank the panels of neutral smells once again. But now, after having beenmade anxious by the images, they described some of the smells as negative.
So What’s Going On?

MRI revealed that during induced anxiety, the smell related circuits of the brain became intertwinedwith the brain’s emotional circuitry. Normally, those circuits don’t interact much, but when thesubjects were anxious, the circuits morphed into something like a unified network, essentiallyrewiring the brain. And somehow, that rewiring affected how the subjects interacted with theworld through smell.

So why does this matter? First, because it helps explain how anxiety can feed on itself. Insofar asbeing anxious makes things smell generally worse, those worse smells may in turn cause greateranxiety, creating an anxiety feedback loop.

On the bright side, understanding how emotion and smell can intertwine may also lead to ways touse smell as a way to combat anxiety and other mental disorders an intriguing possibility that maybe borne out with more research