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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
人们常说打哈欠会传染,每次你一打呵欠,周围的人也会跟着打哈欠。难道哈欠真的可以传染,还是仅仅是巧合而已?我们来看看神经学家是怎么说的吧!
"A yawn is an instinctive1 behavior: You don't have to learn to do it, and yawns are even present before birth." says Robert Provine, a professor of psychology2 and neuroscience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
When we see someone else yawn, we don't think to ourselves, "Well, I'll yawn, too." It just happens -- it's instinctive, and it's a very primal3 aspect of human behavior that goes back to ancient herd4 mentality5.
Adelie penguins6, for instance, employ yawning as part of their courtship ritual. The happy couples face off amid the ice floes and the males engage in what is described as an "ecstatic display," their beaks7 open wide and their faces pointed8 skyward.
It may be, therefore, that when your entry upon the scene inspires a round of uncontrollable yawning, you have merely stumbled onto a gaggle of Adelie penguins in disguise, who are signaling their powerful erotic longing9 for you. A slim hope, admittedly, but any port in a storm.
As for the larger question of why yawns are catching10, nobody really knows. Fact is, we don't know why people yawn.
It was long believed you yawned when there was too much carbon dioxide and not enough oxygen in your blood. A part of your brain called the brain stem detected this and triggered the yawn reflex. Your mouth stretched wide and you inhaled11 deeply, shooting a jolt12 of oxygen into the lungs and thence to the bloodstream.
Subsequently, you exhaled13 a lot of CO2. Often you'd stretch while yawning, which seemed to temporarily improve circulation. You yawned and stretched a lot more when you got tired because your breathing slowed down.
Or so people thought. In recent years, though, a few radicals14 have said the preceding is all malarkey. Who knows, they say, maybe we yawn because it's too warm in the room.
Cecil isn't about to settle the issue here, and he doesn't need to. We merely observe that whatever yawn-inducing conditions prevail for you also apply to your friends.
If you're out late in some crowded dive, you're probably all tired, all warm under the collar, and all breathing the same stale air. You're probably all on the verge15 of a yawn, too, and the power of suggestion from seeing one person do it is enough to push everybody else over the edge.
Adults rarely catch a case of the yawns from a child or animal, which tends to corroborate16 this idea.
Children usually have different sleep schedules and respiration17 rates from adults, so you would expect them to yawn at different times. Animals, on the other hand, often yawn not for physiological18 reasons but as a display of hostility19, to which humans are evidently unresponsive.
点击收听单词发音
1 instinctive | |
adj.(出于)本能的;直觉的;(出于)天性的 | |
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2 psychology | |
n.心理,心理学,心理状态 | |
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3 primal | |
adj.原始的;最重要的 | |
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4 herd | |
n.兽群,牧群;vt.使集中,把…赶在一起 | |
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5 mentality | |
n.心理,思想,脑力 | |
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6 penguins | |
n.企鹅( penguin的名词复数 ) | |
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7 beaks | |
n.鸟嘴( beak的名词复数 );鹰钩嘴;尖鼻子;掌权者 | |
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8 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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9 longing | |
n.(for)渴望 | |
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10 catching | |
adj.易传染的,有魅力的,迷人的,接住 | |
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11 inhaled | |
v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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12 jolt | |
v.(使)摇动,(使)震动,(使)颠簸 | |
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13 exhaled | |
v.呼出,发散出( exhale的过去式和过去分词 );吐出(肺中的空气、烟等),呼气 | |
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14 radicals | |
n.激进分子( radical的名词复数 );根基;基本原理;[数学]根数 | |
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15 verge | |
n.边,边缘;v.接近,濒临 | |
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16 corroborate | |
v.支持,证实,确定 | |
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17 respiration | |
n.呼吸作用;一次呼吸;植物光合作用 | |
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18 physiological | |
adj.生理学的,生理学上的 | |
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19 hostility | |
n.敌对,敌意;抵制[pl.]交战,战争 | |
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