美国国家公共电台 NPR The Roots Of Consciousness: We're Of 2 Minds

 

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

NPR's Invisibilia, the show about human behavior, has returned with a new season of stories about the invisible forces that shape our lives. This week, they're looking at how ideas and concepts from our culture get into our heads and influence what we do.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Sometimes, that happens in ways that are unexpected and bizarre. Here's Hanna Rosin with a story of what one woman experienced after brain surgery.

(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I don't know if you talk with your hands or anything, but...

HANNA ROSIN, BYLINE¹: Hello?

KAREN BYRNE: Hello?

ALIX SPIEGEL AND HANNA ROSIN: Hi.

BYRNE: (Laughter).

ALIX SPIEGEL, BYLINE: Hi. Sorry.

ROSIN: Recently, my co-host Alix Spiegel and I called a woman named Karen Byrne. In her late 20s, Karen had gotten this very serious operation on her brain. The operation was to treat Karen's epilepsy, which was so bad that Karen was having near-constant seizures². So her doctors put her to sleep and cut into her brain. And Karen says when she woke up, her speech was a little funny. But, basically, she felt great.

BYRNE: I had woken up. And I was sitting on the hospital bed, talking to my surgeon. And...

ROSIN: And then, all of a sudden, her left hand picked itself up and started moving towards her shirt, started delicately undoing³ its pearly top button.

BYRNE: My hand was taking my clothes off.

ROSIN: Taking your clothes off?

BYRNE: Yeah. My hand was taking my shirt off (laughter).

(SOUNDBITE OF MALCOLM LOCKYER SONG, "THE STROLLER")

ROSIN: And you didn't have any thought like, I'd like to take my blouse off now.

BYRNE: No, no, no, no. It just started to do it.

ROSIN: Karen, of course, was completely shocked. And so was her surgeon.

BYRNE: (Laughter) And the surgeon was like, Karen, do you realize what's happening? I said, yeah. Something's wrong.

(SOUNDBITE OF MALCOLM LOCKYER SONG, "THE STROLLER")

ROSIN: And then, all of a sudden, the hand seemed to get angry.

BYRNE: It was tearing the buttons off the shirt.

ROSIN: Karen kept telling it to stop.

BYRNE: Knock it off. Knock it off. Knock it off.

ROSIN: Her surgeon was screaming at her to control it.

BYRNE: Try to make it stop. I said, I can't. It won't stop it. And then I started to just cry. I just didn't know what to do.

ROSIN: Eventually, they wrestled⁴ her hand down. But what was so troubling was that this didn't seem like some strange, physical spasm⁵. The hand acted like it had intent.

Did the hand seem to have...

BYRNE: A different mind?

ROSIN: Yeah.

BYRNE: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It did seem to have a different mind.

ROSIN: When Karen went home from the hospital, the hand - this new hand with a mind of its own - went with her. A lot of the time, the hand was OK. But it would also get really upset with her. Like, sometimes, when Karen did something it didn't like...

BYRNE: Smacked⁶ me right across my face.

ROSIN: Your own hand.

BYRNE: Yeah, right across my face, right across my face.

ROSIN: Sometimes, it would hit her so hard it left her black and blue.

BYRNE: Yeah.

ROSIN: Her problem, the doctors explained, was alien hand syndrome⁷. See, to cure her epilepsy, they'd had to sever⁸ the two halves of her brain.

BYRNE: Brain was split in half.

ROSIN: They cut right down the center between the two lobes⁹. This wide, flat bundle of neural¹⁰ fiber¹¹ with one of those brainy-sounding names...

BYRNE: Corpus callosum. Yeah.

SPIEGEL: It's like the thing that gets the two halves to speak to each other?

BYRNE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

ROSIN: So without her corpus callosum, her right hemisphere and her left weren't communicating perfectly¹² well. Her right hand seemed to be getting directions primarily from her left hemisphere. And her left hand - this new alien hand - seemed to be getting directions primarily from her right hemisphere. And so what Karen got to see more clearly than most of us was that there really were very different parts of her.

BYRNE: For some reason, my own hand felt some animosity towards me.

ROSIN: Or not her hand, really. Some part of her mind.

BYRNE: Half my brain just didn't particularly care for me too much. I wasn't pleasing it.

ROSIN: And at first, Karen couldn't make sense of what this other part wanted, why it was getting so angry. But as time went on, she saw a distinct pattern and came up with a theory of what that part of herself wanted. Now, this is not science. It's just how Karen sees it. She says she thinks her hand wants her to be more moral.

BYRNE: It's trying to make me a better person.

ROSIN: Basically, her alien hand was trying to enforce all these messages that she'd picked up from her culture about what she should be.

BYRNE: Not to smoke and not to curse. And be nicer to others.

ROSIN: And when Karen deviated¹³ from those cultural norms, it would punish her. Take for example what her alien hand does when she tries to smoke.

BYRNE: When I go to light a cigarette, the hand will either put the cigarette out or flick¹⁴ the ashes around.

ROSIN: Karen hadn't quite realized just how deeply these cultural messages had penetrated¹⁵. And though she's learned to live with it - she's in her 50s now - she's not always happy with it.

BYRNE: Oh, it's such a pain in the rear end. It really is. I understand that you want me to quit. But cut the crap.

(SOUNDBITE OF LIGHTER)

BYRNE: (Laughter).

ROSIN: Hanna Rosin, NPR News.

CORNISH: Invisibilia has a new episode this week. It's out now, and it dives deeper into how cultural concepts affect our behavior and our biases¹⁶.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 seizures   

n.起获( seizure的名词复数 )；没收；充公；起获的赃物

参考例句：

• Seizures of illicit drugs have increased by 30% this year. 今年违禁药品的扣押增长了30%。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Other causes of unconsciousness predisposing to aspiration lung abscess are convulsive seizures. 造成吸入性肺脓肿昏迷的其他原因，有惊厥发作。 来自辞典例句

3 undoing   

n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭

参考例句：

• That one mistake was his undoing. 他一失足即成千古恨。
• This hard attitude may have led to his undoing. 可能就是这种强硬的态度导致了他的垮台。

4 wrestled   

v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤

参考例句：

• As a boy he had boxed and wrestled. 他小的时候又是打拳又是摔跤。
• Armed guards wrestled with the intruder. 武装警卫和闯入者扭打起来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 spasm   

n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作

参考例句：

• When the spasm passed,it left him weak and sweating.一阵痉挛之后，他虚弱无力，一直冒汗。
• He kicked the chair in a spasm of impatience.他突然变得不耐烦，一脚踢向椅子。

6 smacked   

拍，打，掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He smacked his lips but did not utter a word. 他吧嗒两下嘴，一声也不言语。
• She smacked a child's bottom. 她打孩子的屁股。

7 syndrome   

n.综合病症；并存特性

参考例句：

• The Institute says that an unidentified virus is to blame for the syndrome. 该研究所表示,引起这种综合症的是一种尚未确认的病毒。
• Results indicated that 11 fetuses had Down syndrome. 结果表明有11个胎儿患有唐氏综合征。

8 sever   

v.切开，割开；断绝，中断

参考例句：

• She wanted to sever all her connections with the firm.她想断绝和那家公司的所有联系。
• We must never sever the cultural vein of our nation.我们不能割断民族的文化血脉。

9 lobes   

n.耳垂( lobe的名词复数 )；（器官的）叶；肺叶；脑叶

参考例句：

• The rotor has recesses in its three faces between the lobes. 转子在其凸角之间的三个面上有凹槽。 来自辞典例句
• The chalazal parts of the endosperm containing free nuclei forms several lobes. 包含游离核的合点端胚乳部分形成几个裂片。 来自辞典例句

10 neural   

adj.神经的，神经系统的

参考例句：

• The neural network can preferably solve the non- linear problem.利用神经网络建模可以较好地解决非线性问题。
• The information transmission in neural system depends on neurotransmitters.信息传递的神经途径有赖于神经递质。

11 fiber   

n.纤维，纤维质

参考例句：

• The basic structural unit of yarn is the fiber.纤维是纱的基本结构单元。
• The material must be free of fiber clumps.这种材料必须无纤维块。

12 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

13 deviated   

v.偏离，越轨( deviate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• On this occasion the plane deviated from its usual flight path. 这一次那架飞机偏离了正常的航线。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His statements sometimes deviated from the truth. 他的陈述有时偏离事实。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 flick   

n.快速的轻打，轻打声，弹开；v.轻弹，轻轻拂去，忽然摇动

参考例句：

• He gave a flick of the whip.他轻抽一下鞭子。
• By a flick of his whip,he drove the fly from the horse's head.他用鞭子轻抽了一下，将马头上的苍蝇驱走。

15 penetrated   

adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• The knife had penetrated his chest. 刀子刺入了他的胸膛。
• They penetrated into territory where no man had ever gone before. 他们已进入先前没人去过的地区。

16 biases   

偏见( bias的名词复数 )； 偏爱； 特殊能力； 斜纹

参考例句：

• Stereotypes represent designer or researcher biases and assumptions, rather than factual data. 它代表设计师或者研究者的偏见和假设，而不是实际的数据。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• The net effect of biases on international comparisons is easily summarized. 偏差对国际比较的基本影响容易概括。