The Human Body: Life Story 生命物语-3

It's an amazing list. In fact, no life is an ordinary story. We'll each in our time do an incredible¹ amount. And the driving force behind everything we do is the most complicated organ in our bodies and also the most mysterious. It's our brain.

"This is something I've never done before in my life. And I never thought I would. But although I have only been doing it for a few hours, I can do at least a bit of it on autopilot. Well, a little bit of it, anyway. "

This kind of driving takes a whole new range of skills, and you need to be able to use them almost automatically². It's my brain that lets me do that.

"Well, my brain is now doing half a dozen tricky³ new jobs all at once, without my even thinking about it, so much so that I can devote some of my thoughts and my attention to speaking to you."

And that's what brains are so good at. They manage things without us even being conscious of them. .

..on the inside here....

Your brains are doing it right now. Because whilst⁴ I've been coping with six new tricky things, your brains have been doing literally⁵ tens of millions of tasks just while you are watching television.

"Put it in another way, it's as if you were not just driving this car, but driving every car, bus, motorbike, taxi, lorry in the country, all at the same time. You just thought you were putting your feet on."

To see how busy your brain really is, you gotta look at the world differently.

words and expressions

so much so that : 到这样的程度以致...

1 incredible   

adj.难以置信的，不可信的，极好的，大量的

参考例句：

• Some planets run at incredible speed.某些星球以难以置信的速度运行着。
• Her answer showed the most incredible stupidity.她的回答显示出不可思议的愚蠢。

2 automatically   

adv.不加思索地，无意识地，自动地

参考例句：

• The machine cycles automatically.这台机器自动循环运转。
• She had automatically labelled the boys as troublemakers.她不假思索地认定这些男孩子是捣蛋鬼。

3 tricky   

adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的

参考例句：

• I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手，你能帮我吗？
• He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题，只做了个笼统的表述。

4 whilst   

conj.一边...一边，当...的时候，同时，时时

参考例句：

• She sang whilst she worked.她边干活边唱歌。
• There was dead silence in the court,whilst the white rabbit read out these verses.当白兔子念诗的时候，法庭上鸦雀无声。

5 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。