Wherever you live you all want a home where you can just get in and forget the outside world. People don’t often turn it into what they want because they worry about the cost. 【小题1】－you don’t need to spend a lot of money in order to make your home cozy (温暖舒适的). Here are some inexpensive ways to get you started.

The first thing you need to do before buying or rearranging anything is clear.【小题2】. There is no way to turn a cluttered (杂乱的) space into an inviting one without organizing it. So, the first thing you do is clear. You don’t have to throw out everything—clearing can be an ongoing process that takes time, and that’s okay.

【小题3】. Aside from the eye-pleasing effect plants and flowers have, they also remove toxins (毒素) from the air, making your environment healthier. If that isn’t enough for you, they tend to help calm people down.

Another thing you can do to make a room look warmer is to use some darker shades in the decoration. Lighter colors are great for making a room feel bigger, but darker colors create more of a cozy and inviting feeling.【小题4】.

Last, but certainly not least, is lighting. The lighting in a room can make or break it, depending on how you go about it.【小题5】. Think of using the fireplace if you have one, lighting some candles and hanging up some string lights. Even a lamp can make all the difference to the environment of a room.

People have become increasingly lonely, and this lack of social connection is having profound effects on mental and physical health. US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy offered some of his best advice.

·Reconnect with people. To get started, spend 15 minutes each day on contacting a friend. 【小题1】 Your relationships cannot maintain unless they’re cared. The brief interactions can make you feel good for a long time because people are hard-wired to connect. Even if it’s only a brief conversation, show how much you value the person you’re speaking with by being authentic, Dr. Murthy advised.

·【小题2】 How often have you caught yourself looking at your phone while someone is speaking with you? What about during meals? For more satisfying quality time, put down the devices, minimize disturbance and focus on the conversation. “Humans evolved(进化) to not only understand what someone is saying but to respond to their words and to experience their presence,” Dr. Murthy said. “【小题3】”

·Serve others. Studies show volunteering can ease feelings of loneliness. Consider donating your time to an organization in your community or offering to help your family or co-workers. As Dr. Murthy put it, when you help others, you establish an experience or a connection with them.【小题4】

·Get help. Finally, tell someone if you are struggling with loneliness.【小题5】 If you’re feeling constantly sad and hopeless, and it is getting in the way of your ability to function in your day-to-day life or to participate in activities that used to bring you joy, that’s a red flag that you may need to speak with a professional.

Here are the simple instructions given by a Harvard University assistant professor to people participating in a recent science study: “Imagine the following scene. Visualize it in your mind’s eye, as vividly as you can: a person walks into a room and knocks a ball off a table.”

The assistant professor, Tomer Ullman, then asked those in the study about their mental images: “Did you see how big the ball was? How about the person’s hair color?” Most participants visualized the former but not the latter. Ullman and his colleagues term this absence of details “noncommitment” to mental imagery (意象).

Brain imaging studies show that mental imagery engages the same neurons (744770) in similar ways as perception (EXXI). Visualizing things seems to have much in common with actually seeing them. But if mental images are indeed pictures, why do they lack such simple details?

Ullman and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments in which participants visualized the ball and table scene and were then presented with the questions selected by the researchers. The findings show 78% of the participants did not visualize at least two details. People are often unaware of how little detail their mental images contain until asked. They don’t notice how much they don’t notice. It has nothing to do with a person forgetting the contents of a mental image, and it also is found in people with vivid imaginations.

“Nearly everyone can tell you the size of the ball but not the person’s hair color,” Ullman says. “It’s like there’s one hierarchy when we construct images, and spatial properties are high up. Then things like colors are further down.” This fits with Kosslyn’s “skeletal image” theory, in which overall shape is generated first, and other details are added as needed.

“There are imagery-based systems for interviewing people who witnessed a crime to guide them through trying to visualize it as accurately as possible,” Kosslyn says. Imagination is an issue, but understanding noncommitment better could help develop ways of getting more accurate eyewitness evidence, he says. “That’s worth a lot.”