A
team of researchers in California has developed a way to predict what kinds of
objects people are looking at by scanning what's happening in their
brains. When you look at something, your eyes send a signal
about that object to your brain. Different regions of the brain process the
information your eyes send. Cells in your brain called neurons are responsible
for this processing. The fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging) brain scans could generally match electrical activity in the brain to
the basic shape of a picture that someone was looking at. Like
cells anywhere else in your body, active neurons use oxygen. Blood brings oxygen
to the neurons, and the more active a neuron is, the more oxygen it will
consume. The more active a region of the brain, the more active its neurons, and
in turn, the more blood will travel to that region. And by using fMRI,
scientists can visualize which parts of the brain receive more oxygen rich blood
and therefore, which parts are working to process information.
An fMRI machine is a device that scans the brain and measures changes in blood
flow to the brain. The technology shows researchers how brain activity changes
when a person thinks, looks at something, or carries out an activity like
speaking or reading. By highlighting the areas of the brain at work when a
person looks at different images, fMRI may help scientists determine specific
patterns of brain activity associated with different kinds of images.
The California researchers tested brain activity by having two volunteers
view hundreds of pictures of everyday objects, like people, animals, and fruits.
The scientists used an fMRI machine to record the volunteers' brain activity
with each photograph they looked at. Different objects caused different regions
of the volunteers' brains to light up on the scan, indicating activity. The
scientists used this information to build a model to predict how the brain might
respond to any image the eyes see. In a second test, the
scientists asked the volunteers to look at 120 new pictures. Like before, their
brains were scanned every time they looked at a new image. This time, the
scientists used their model to match the fMRI scans to the image. For example,
if a scan in the second test showed the same pattern of brain activity that was
strongly, related to pictures of apples in the first test, their model would
have predicted the volunteers were looking at apples.
单选题
What is responsible for processing the information sent by your eyes?
A.A small region of the brain.
B.The central part of the brain.
C.Neurons in the brain.
D.Oxygen rich blood.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[解析] 根据文中第二段最后一句“Cells in your brain called neurons are responsible for this processing.”可知在大脑中被称为神经元的细胞负责这个过程。所以C项符合题意，故本题选C。
单选题
Which of the following statements is NOT meant by the writer?
A.Cells in your brain are called neurons.
B.The more oxygen a neuron consumes, the more blood it needs.
C.fMRI helps scientists to discover which parts of the brain process
information.
D.fMRI helps scientists to discover how the brain develops
intelligently.