英语听力文摘 English Digest 728 心情可以影响你的嗅觉（在线收听）

The Smell Of Anxiety

Our sense of smell can have a large impact on how we think and feel. But did you know that mood can affect how we smell?

When Neutral Odors Turn Bad

According to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison, feeling anxious can make typically neutral smells seem repugnant.

The study involved a dozen volunteers who rated a panel of neutral smells. Then, while inside an MRI machine, subjects were made to feel anxious with disturbing images of car crashes and grisly war scenes.

They were then asked to rank the panels of neutral smells once again. But now, after having been made anxious by the images, they described some of the smells as negative.

So What’s Going On?

MRI revealed that during induced anxiety, the smell related circuits of the brain became intertwined with the brain’s emotional circuitry. Normally, those circuits don’t interact much, but when the subjects were anxious, the circuits morphed into something like a unified network, essentially rewiring the brain. And somehow, that rewiring affected how the subjects interacted with the world through smell.

So why does this matter? First, because it helps explain how anxiety can feed on itself. Insofar as being anxious makes things smell generally worse, those worse smells may in turn cause greater anxiety, creating an anxiety feedback loop.

On the bright side, understanding how emotion and smell can intertwine may also lead to ways to use smell as a way to combat anxiety and other mental disorders an intriguing possibility that may be borne out with more research

心情可以影响你的嗅觉

我们的嗅觉会对我们的思维和感觉产生很大影响。但你知道情绪会影响我们的嗅觉吗？

中性气味变差时

根据威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的研究人员的一项研究，感到焦虑会使典型的中性气味变得令人厌恶。

这项研究涉及十几名志愿者，他们对一组中性气味进行了评级。然后，在核磁共振成像机内，受试者被令人不安的车祸和可怕的战争场面所困扰。

然后，他们被要求再次对中性气味小组进行排名。但现在，在被这些照片弄得焦虑不安之后，他们把一些气味描述为负面的。

那到底发生了什么？

核磁共振成像显示，在诱发焦虑期间，大脑的嗅觉相关回路与大脑的情绪回路交织在一起。通常情况下，这些电路不会产生太多的交互作用，但当受试者感到焦虑时，这些电路就会演变成一个类似于统一网络的东西，基本上就是重新连接大脑。不知何故，重新布线影响了受试者如何通过嗅觉与世界互动。

那么为什么这很重要呢？首先，因为它有助于解释焦虑是如何自食其力的。如果焦虑会让事情变得更糟，那么这些更糟的气味可能会导致更大的焦虑，从而形成焦虑反馈回路。

从好的方面来看，了解情绪和气味如何相互交织也可能会导致使用气味作为对抗焦虑和其他精神障碍的方法，这一有趣的可能性可能会得到更多研究的证实