Time flies when you play on your smartphone. But when you get down to study, one hour feels like a year. Why are we so attracted by smartphones but easily bored by studying? Because there is dopamine (多巴胺).

Dopamine is a “pleasure chemical” that makes people feel good. Our brains give it out when we eat delicious food, after we exercise or when we get a prize.

Compared with studying, playing on smartphones causes our brains to give out more dopamine. But why? When we visit media, we don’t know what we’ll see next, or who will give ideas about things. This “magic of maybe”, makes the dopamine active. We get excited wondering if we have messages from our friends. When our expectations (期待) are met, dopamine is given out.

And to find more dopamine, we continue checking our phones. Studying doesn’t provide such magic. Without this excitement, we get bored much more easily.

Can we do something to change that? According to scientists, apps can become less attractive if we turn off notices or change the screen colors to black and white. We can also set time limits on apps to avoid using them too much.

“As for studying, you could check your progress daily or weekly.” said Daniel Wong, writer of The Happy Student. “You could also search for interesting things in your textbook. Use what you’ve learned to make an influence in the real world. This will make knowledge much more interesting to learn.”

Scott and Owen are twins at the age of 16. The twins have many quite amazing ways in their life. They have had a very special connection since they were born. When they were very small, they had their own language. They used to talk to each other using their own special language. But nobody else understood what they were saying. 【小题1】

“As we’ve got older, we’ve started using telepathy（心灵感应）to communicate. 【小题2】 We can send messages to each other even when we aren’t in the same place. It sounds unbelievable, but I’ve always known if Owen was in trouble. Once he broke his leg, I got this terrible pain in my leg at once.” said Scott.

【小题3】A lot of research has showed that some twins have this ability. In one experiment, eight-year-old Richard and his twin, Damien, were put in separate rooms. Damien was connected to a machine. Richard was then asked to put his arm into freezing cold water. As soon as he put his arm into the water, Damien went wild.

There have been similar cases between adult twins too. Actor Ashley lives far away from Mary, her twin sister. 【小题4】 Ashley says she can know as soon as something terrible or surprising happened to Mary.

There are many other examples about telepathy between the twins. 【小题5】 Then you can search for more facts at www. suntwins. com. You will believe there is telepathy actually.