In a letter he wrote in 1884, Mark Twain complained that “Telephones, telegraphs and words are too slow for this age; we must get something that is faster.” “We should communicate by thought only, and say in a couple of minutes what should have ballooned into ________ in an hour and a half,” said him.

Despite the progress the previous century brought for our understanding of both language and the brain, we are no closer to telepathy(心灵感应), communication from one mind to another by ________ means, than we were in Twain’s time. The reason is that the telepathy we’ve been promised, the sort imagined by Twain, and ________ in countless movies and TV shows, is, for the time being, groundless.

“Good old-fashioned telepathy” (GOFT) involves a direct transfer of ________ from one mind to another. It has fascinated people for good reasons. It removes the ________ of language. With GOFT, we no longer need to put each concept into words or to ________ someone’s language. You know instantly what one means as the former channel of communication, language, is not at all necessary. The ________ of language is the central feature of GOFT. It is what enables science-fiction writers to imagine humans and aliens from other planets communicating telepathically despite not sharing a language. But can it really come true with current science and technology?

Besides, GOFT promises genuine communication. However, ________ is universal. We all have experiences of saying one thing, only to be understood as saying something else. Because language is so flexible, it is also easy to lie or ________ oneself.   We aren’t even certain if Bob’s expression could be in line with what he believes in a year’s time.

These weaknesses have driven people to look for alternatives and finally inspired inventions of artificial languages trying to remove misunderstanding. Of course, one day when technology allows, a direct thought-to-thought transfer seems the ________ solution.

Many of us have the confidence that we can think faster than we can speak or write. Having to rely ________ on language to communicate, however, is depressing. Therefore, the ________ of adding new direct brain-to-brain communication channels is exciting. By channels of this kind, our brains can be “________ ” and allowed to be committed to other ________ practices instead of conveying messages.   New brain-to-brain channels have the potential to increase ________, turning us into super-actors, handling so many tasks in a short period of time as we cannot yet imagine.

Being a social butterfly just might change your brain: In people with a large network of friends and excellent social skills, certain brain regions are bigger and _______ connected than in people with fewer friends, a new study finds.

The research suggests a _______ between social interactions and brain structure. “We’re interested in how your brain is able to allow you to _______ the right way in complex social environments,” Mary Ann Noonan said, a neuroscientist (神经学家) at Oxford University. Studies in monkeys have shown that brain areas involved in face processing and in predicting the _______ of others are larger in animals living in large social groups than in ones living in smaller groups.

To investigate these brain _______ in humans, Noonan and her colleagues found 18 participants for a structural brain-imaging study. They asked people how many _______ they had experienced in the past month, in order to determine the size of their social networks. As was the case in monkeys, some brain areas were _______ and better connected in people with larger social networks. “These different brain regions are all singing _______ songs,” Noonan said. “ _______ areas are all singing the same song, and when they’re connected better, they’re singing more harmoniously with each other.”

The researchers also tested whether the size of a person’s social network was connected with ________ in white-matter pathways, the nerve fibers (纤维) that connect different brain regions. ________ , they found that white-matter pathways were better connected in people with bigger social networks. “The nerves were more like a Los Angeles freeway than a ________ road,” Noonan said.

The researchers couldn’t say whether social interaction ________ these changes in brain structure and connectivity, or whether the brain determined how social someone was. In the case of the monkeys, the researchers asked and wrote down the size of the animals’ social network, so they ________ that social-group size was causing the brain differences. It can be inferred that a similar process takes place in human brains, but to prove the ________ , long-term studies are needed, Noonan told Live Science.

Famous people often say that the key to becoming both happy and successful is to “do what you love”. But mastering a skill, even one that you deeply love, _________ a huge amount of dull work. Anyone who wants to master a skill must run through the cycle of practice, _________ feedback, modification, and increasing improvement again, again and again. Some people seem able to concentrate on practicing an activity like this for years and take pleasure in their gradual improvement. Yet others find this kind of focused, time-intensive work to be _________ or boring. Why?

The difference may _________ the ability to enter into state of “flow,” the feeling of being completely involved in what you are doing. Since Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed the _________ of flow in the 1970’s, it has been a mainstay of positive-psychology research. Flow states can happen in the course of any activity, and they are most common when a task has well-defined goals and is at a(n) _________ skill level.

Csikszentmihalyi suggested that those who most _________ entered into flow states had an “autotelic (自成目的的) personality” — a disposition to seek out challenges and get into a state of flow. While those without such a personality see difficulties, autotelic individuals see opportunities to build skills. With their capacity for “disinterested interest”, such people have a great _________ over others in developing their innate abilities.

Fortunately for those of us who aren’t necessarily blessed with an autotelic personality, there is evidence that flow states can be _________ by environmental factors. By giving ourselves unstructured, open-ended time, minimal __________, and a task set at a moderate level of difficulty, we may be able to love what we’re doing.