【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】[解析] 1-5
W: Today, I am delighted to bring to you neurophysiologist, meditation teacher and author of the hit new book Buddha's Brain : The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, Rick Hanson, (1) Ph.D. Rick is a co-founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, which also publishes the monthly Wise Brain Bulletin and hosts the WiseBrain. org website. He is also the author of Meditations for Happiness audio download and co-author of Meditations to Change Your Brain CD set. And today Rick talks to us about how we can use our minds to change our brains, to help our minds in everyday life. Mr.Rick, welcome you to our program.
M: Thanks, my pleasure.
W: You quote a popular phrase that came from Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb, saying, "neurons that fire together, wire together. "Can you tell us why you quote this?
M: Well, you know that Hebb and his companies are trying to understand how we learn things, and he is the one who developed the theory to explain how mental activity change neural structure. (2) And since it is borne out, it is subsequently widely researched. I quoted his words here to make clear my chief research field, and how I go on my research. For example, if you got used to get angry, the neurons involved in that particular mental activity will fire busily together, and automatically start wiring together as well. As a result, this will cause to adding the feeling of sadness, sorrow, dissatisfaction to your neural structure to make you depressed much more. On the contrary, if you regularly focus on the good facts around you and inside you—like your own good qualities, such as patience, determination, or kindness—then the neurons involved will wire together to make you feel hopeful, confident, and happy.
W: That sounds good. If we think more good things than bad ones, we will make ourselves happy easily. But how can we consciously do this?
M: Good question. Yes, any single time you do either of emotional activities usually will not make much difference, but the longer you do one or the other will definitely make difference on yourself. As they say in Tibet, if you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves. According to some traditional points, the mind takes the shape of what it rests upon. Our modern scientists are starting to research how exactly this happens. How our thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, sorrows and sufferings gradually impressed on our brains. We finally find that you truly can use your mind to change your mind for the better, with what you have remembered in your mind to benefit everyone else whose life you touch.
W: In your book, you have mentioned how our brains emphasize negative experiences. Why is this and what can we do about it to create greater balance?
M: (3) We human beings, are by nature refused to respond when we are not in pain, hungry, upset. We like to be conscious, calm, satisfied, caring, and creative, but with the development of society, it is usually more important for survival to avoid being hurt by others than gaining such things as food, shelter, or mating. The result is what scientists call a "negativity bias" in the brain. Thus our brains tend to remember sad things easily but again to remember happy things, for the necessity of existing. Therefore, we must learn to do something against toward our brains to keep balance.
W: There is a chapter in your book called "Taking in the Good"; would you tell us a bit about what this is and why it is important to our lives.
M: To sum up, I offer readers some practical processes to follow to pull out our brains from negativity bias, and transfer your minds to good aspects. Altogether, there are three simple steps you can refer to. (4) Step one, look for good facts about the world and yourself, and register them as good experiences. Step two, close your eyes, think about the good experiences, just as you taste a delicious dish. Sense that it is filling your body, and really enjoy it! Make such feelings last for sometime. Step three, try to do this several times a day. Most of the good experiences you noted will be fairly mild, and expected. As you do this, you will gradually change your own brain for greater inner strength, happiness, love, and wisdom.
W: Mr.Rick, if you were sitting across the table from someone, who looks like that sort of person in great distress, how might you interact with him and what advice could you give them?
M: Well, this is really a challenging task for me. However, I shall have a try. I'd start with compassion, and try to understand whatever was going on with the person. The most important thing is to do it in no harm. Then I might find whether the person had compassion for herself—let's say the person is female, for simplicity,—whether her own suffering mattered to her, and whether she was on her own side with regard to doing something about it. While this may seem obvious, it is actually a missing link for many people. I'd also find who loved her, who cared about her, and try to encourage her with the kindness in her life. Assuming she is willing to take sensible actions—inside her head and outside in the world—to help things get better. I'd want to explore: what could be done in the world to improve things. And what could be done inside her body to make things better. (5) Of course, when giving my advice, I shall know more about her personal relationship, environment, personal growth and spiritual practice, you know, these are very important to know of a person. One point worthily to point out is about her health condition. When someone is distressed, the physical situation will worsen. Now, what skills and practices would help things inside her mind. The details of this would depend on the sources of her distress.
W: OK, enough about our topic today, thank you for your good advice.
M: I'm glad to.