SSS 2010-11-09
时间：2019-01-08 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(十一)月
This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.
Modern human babies are essentially 1 learning machines. After birth, their brains grow in leaps and bounds, allowing infants to lay the groundwork for future social and cognitive 2 achievement. But it wasn't that way for Neanderthals. At least in terms of the shape of their brains, Neanderthal newborns pretty much coasted into adulthood 3.
Scientists have shown that Neanderthal brains are about the same size as ours. Yet our Paleolithic brethren are not known for having been great scholars. To probe this cognitive conundrum 4, researchers took CT scans of 11 Neanderthal brains, including one newborn. And they compared these images to those of modern humans.
They found that baby braincases are similar in size and shape, regardless of their parentage. All are elongated 5, most likely to smooth passage through the birth canal. But modern human baby brains grow more globular in the first year of life, changes that reflect a massive wave of neural 6 development. That phase change is absent in Neanderthals, whose brains retain that extended newborn shape throughout their lives. The results appear in the journal Current Biology.
It's not clear whether our well-rounded brains made us the pointy-headed intellectuals we are today. But they do make us look smart in a cap and gown.
Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin.
- Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
- She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。
- As children grow older,their cognitive processes become sharper.孩子们越长越大，他们的认知过程变得更为敏锐。
- The cognitive psychologist is like the tinker who wants to know how a clock works.认知心理学者倒很像一个需要通晓钟表如何运转的钟表修理匠。
- Some infantile actions survive into adulthood.某些婴儿期的行为一直保持到成年期。
- Few people nowadays are able to maintain friendships into adulthood.如今很少有人能将友谊维持到成年。
- Let me give you some history about a conundrum.让我给你们一些关于谜题的历史。
- Scientists had focused on two explanations to solve this conundrum.科学家已锁定两种解释来解开这个难题。
- Modigliani's women have strangely elongated faces. 莫迪里阿尼画中的妇女都长着奇长无比的脸。
- A piece of rubber can be elongated by streching. 一块橡皮可以拉长。 来自《用法词典》