VOA常速英语2015--男女大脑没有太显著差别

男女大脑没有太显著差别

Scientists have long held that there are differences between men's and women's brains. The Tel Aviv team wanted to find out if those differences are significant enough to create two distinctly different types of brain, just as there are distinctly male and female reproductive organs.

长期以来，科学家一直认为男性和女性大脑有所不同。特拉维夫大学这个研究团队希望查明这些差别是否足够显著，形成两种完全不同类型的大脑，就像男女生殖器官的差别一样。

"To answer this question, we looked at over 1,400 brains from different samples," said Daphna Joel, who heads the psychobiology program at Tel Aviv University. "In each sample we determined¹ the regions showing the largest differences, and then we asked whether these differences add up so whether the subject is on the female end, as you can see here on the female end of the continuum in one region, whether this subject will also be on the female end of the continuum on all other regions, and what we found is that this is very rare."

“为了回答这个问题，我们观察了1400多个不同的大脑样本。在每一个样本中，我们都确定了表现出最大差别的区域，然后我们询问这些差别是否说的通，让我们得出结论大脑的主体是女性，就像你在这个区域看到的这个连续性整体的一部分，还是其他区域的连续整体的一部分的男性特征，我们发现这种差别非常罕见。”

The researchers determined that specific parts of the brain do show sex differences, but an individual brain rarely has all 'male' or all 'female' traits. `.

研究人员认为，大脑的特定部位确实表现出性别差异，但是个体大脑很少拥有所有男性或女性特征。

So what are the social repercussions² of the findings? Joel suggests that we should try to move from the language categorizing people according to their sex toward the language treating everyone according to their specific characteristics and interests.

那么，这些研究结果的社会反响是什么呢？Joel指出，我们不应该再根据性别来对人们进行分类，而应该根据他们特别的性格和兴趣来分类。

"It means that our assumption as a society that our sex category—whether we have male or female genitalia has implications to what we would love, what we would like to do and what type of person we will be that also people come in two types, male nature and female nature—this has no scientific basis and people are very different from each other," she said.

“这意味着我们整个社会对性别分类的假设——我们是否有男性或女性生殖器官暗示我们爱什么，我们喜欢做什么，我们是哪种类型的人，将人分为两种类型，男性特质和女性特质——这没有科学根据，每个人都有所不同。”

While most scientists agree that brains contain varying mixtures of male and female anatomical traits, many say that prevailing³ evidence proves that sex has an important influence on brain function.

尽管大部分科学家赞同大脑是由不同的男性和女性解剖特征混合组成的，许多人表示，最常见的证据证明，性别对大脑功能有着非常重要的影响。

 

Mental health experts, for example, argue that exploring biological differences between male and female brains may help answer questions such as why men are more likely than women to develop autism, while women are more likely to suffer from depression. They say more study is needed to determine in what way and to what extent one's sex influences the brain.

心理健康专家辩称，探索男性和女性大脑的生物学差别可以回答几个问题，比如为什么男性比女性更容易患自闭症，而女性比男性更容易患抑郁症。他们说，要确定性别如何影响大脑，影响到什么程度，还需要进行更多研究。

1 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

2 repercussions   

n.后果，反响( repercussion的名词复数 )；余波

参考例句：

• The collapse of the company will have repercussions for the whole industry. 这家公司的垮台将会给整个行业造成间接的负面影响。
• Human acts have repercussions far beyond the frontiers of the human world. 人类行为所产生的影响远远超出人类世界的范围。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 prevailing   

adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的

参考例句：

• She wears a fashionable hair style prevailing in the city.她的发型是这个城市流行的款式。
• This reflects attitudes and values prevailing in society.这反映了社会上盛行的态度和价值观。