雅思阅读-练习一
(总分40,考试时间90分钟)
Reading passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
Questions 1-8
Reading Passage 1 has eleven marked paragraphs, A-K.
    Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
    Write the correct number, i-xiii, in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.
    List of Headings
i    human differences on humor
    ii    social functions of laughter
    iii  the favorable influence on your brain
    iv    importance of humor to human
    v    laughter and human emotion
    vi    laughter and humor
    vii  new therapies to human psychological diseases
    viii  improvement of your health
    ix    research on physical health by looking at humor
    x    connection between laughter and some brain area
    xi    brain wave responses to outside change
    xii  requirement of keeping fresh
    xiii  diversity of brain functions
1. Paragraph C
2. Paragraph D
3. Paragraph E
4. Paragraph F
5. Paragraph G
6. Paragraph H
7. Paragraph I
8. Paragraph J
Human And Humor
    Rebecca Roth
    A Everybody smiles and laughs at some time or another. The first laughter appears at about 3.5 to 4 months of age before we are able to speak. The average adult laughs 17 times a day. Even monkeys and apes have some facial expressions that are similar to human smiles. But really, why do we laugh?
tickle
    B Although there is considerable information on the neuronal representation of speech,  little is known about brain mechanisms of laughter. While many researchers have tracked the brain mechanisms of depression, fear and anger, they have ignored positive emotions and have just begun to study humor. Their investigations are shedding some light on how the brain processes humor and prompts laughter.
    C Take this joke for instance：How many Bryn Mawr college students does it take to change a light bulb? Answer：None, they were all so busy studying that they didn't even notice the light was out. If you found this old joke funny, you will get some activity going on in the brain. Investigations into how humor and laughter influence the brain are leading to a clearer understanding of how positive emotions affect brain mechanisms. This in turn may lead to creative ideas for new therapies for emotion disorders and pain.
    D The physiological study of laughter has its own name. "gel otology" . Research has shown that laughing is more than just a person's voice and movement. Laughter requires the coordination of many muscles throughout the body. Laughter increases blood pressure sometimes while provides a boost to the immune system. It may be a good way for people to relax because muscle tension is reduced after laughing. Human tests have found some evidence that humorous videos and tapes can reduce feelings of pain, prevent negative stress reactions and boost the brain's biological battle against infection. More studies are needed in this field to uncover whether humor or some **ponent such as distraction, is the predominant factor in these results.
    E Researchers believe we process humor and laughter through a complex pathway of brain activity. In one new study, researchers used imaging equipment to photograph the brain activity of healthy volunteers while they underwent a sidesplitting assignment of reading written jokes, viewing cartoons from The New Yorker magazine as well as The Far Side and listening to digital recordings of laughter. Preliminary results indicate that the humor-processing pathway includes parts of the frontal lobe brain area, important for cognit
ive processing; the supplementary motor area, important for movement；and the nucleus accumbens, associated with pleasure. Investigations support the notion that parts of the frontal lobe are involved in humor. Subjects' brains were imaged while they listened to jokes. The frontal lobe was activated only when they thought a joke was funny. A study **pared healthy individuals with people who had damage to their frontal lobes, the subjects with the damaged ones were more likely to choose a wrong punch line to written jokes and didn't laugh or smile as much at funny cartoons or jokes.
    F Despite that, it is still hard to explain why we don't giggle when we tickle ourselves.  Some scientists believe that laughing caused by tickling is a built-in reflex because even babies do it. If we tickle ourselves in the same spot our friend tickled us. we hardly laugh as we did previously. The information sent to your spinal cord and brain should be exactly the same. Apparently for tickl ing to work, the brain needs tension and surprise. When you tickle yourself, you know exactly what here is no tension or surprise. How the brain uses this information about tension and surprise is still a mystery, but there is some evidence that the cerebellum may be involved.  Because one part of the brain tells another：
"It's just you. Don't get excited. "
    G Damage to any one part of the brain may affect one's overall ability to process humor.  Peter Derks, a professor of psychology, conducted his research with a group of scientists at NASA-Langley in Hampton. Using a sophisticated electroencephalogram (EEG), they measured the brain activity of 10 people following exposure to humorous stimuli and test how quickly our brain recognizes the incongruity that deals with most humor and attaches an abstract meaning to it determines whether we laugh. However,  different people find different jokes funny. That can be due to a number of factors,  including differences in personality, intelligence, mental state and probably mood.

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