We humans often say that a growling dog is “angry” or a purring cat is “happy”. But those terms are of little use to scientists like David Anderson who studies the brain circuits (脑回路) involved in emotional behaviors.
“We have to do more than just project our own emotions onto other animals,” he says. Yet Anderson describes research from his lab that suggests the brain circuits underlying human emotions have a lot in common with circuits found in animals’. “What lies beneath feelings,” he says, “is brain states that produce certain behaviors. And that’s the part of emotions we share in common with animals and that scientists can study.”
For example, Anderson’s lab has investigated fruit flies that become much more active when they see a moving shadow looking like their natural enemy. “We see that the more times we deliver the shadow the jumpier the flies become,” he says. And the flies keep jumping long after the shadow is gone. Anderson would behave much the same if he saw a snake. “I’d jump in the air,” he says. “Even for minutes after the snake had slipped away into the bushes, my heart would be pounding, and I’d probably jump every time I saw a snakelike object—even if it was a stick.”
That sort of behavior is typical of an ongoing brain state called defensive arousal(防御性唤醒). It’s present in both fruit flies and people which is why Anderson believes studying fear of an insect or a mouse is meaningful as it can reveal a lot about human emotions. “We can try to figure out how the brain is generating that state and what makes the animal finally calm down,” Anderson says. “We now understand specific parts of the circuit that increase fear and other parts of the circuit that decrease fear,” Anderson says. The next step, he says, is to figure out how to tweak that circuit to reduce the fear response of people with certain diseases like PTSD.
【小题1】What does Anderson think about people’s common description of animals emotions?| A．It is limited by people’s knowledge of brain functions. |
| B．It is too subjective to be regarded as scientific evidence. |
| C．It is actually some misunderstanding of animals behavior. |
| D．It is meaningless to the study of animals’ emotional behavior. |
| A．To prove the effect of natural enemies on flies’ behavior. |
| B．To show similarities between human and animal emotions. |
| C．To mention the great influence of Anderson’s bad experience. |
| D．To stress the effects of negative emotions on people and animals |
| A．Replace. | B．Predict. | C．Adjust. | D．Observe. |
| A．Looking beyond human feelings. | B．Figuring out more human brain states. |
| C．Finding a cure for certain mental diseases. | D．Changing traditional ways of treating animals. |
