Как умирает мозг

Исследователи приоткрыли завесу тайны над состоянием человеческого мозга в момент умирания человека. Полученные результаты ставят под сомнение выводы, ранее сделанные на основании вскрытия и исследования мертвой мозговой ткани.

Ричард Майерс из Стэнфордского университета и его коллеги обнаружили, что у пациента в коме активен другой набор генов, чем у того, кто быстро умирает от сердечного приступа.

Исследуя чип, несущий тысячу генов, исследователи проверили, какие из них активны в мозге 40 умерших (среди них были страдавшие депрессией, психозом, шизофренией и здоровые люди). Ученые искали гены, которые были бы ненормально активны и соответственно могли вызвать душевные расстройства. Вместо этого они заметили, что те люди, которые находились в предсмертном состоянии несколько часов или дней, демонстрировали один генетический профиль, а те, кто умер внезапно, – другой.

При продолжительной болезни мозг может испытывать нехватку кислорода и сахаров, что, возможно, заставляет его активировать набор генов, призванный помочь клеткам выжить. Кроме того, умирающий мозг угнетает активность генов, связанных с обменом веществ, возможно, потому, что клетки лишены важных питательных веществ. У пациентов, умерших не сразу, мозговая ткань оказалась более кислотной.

Helpful vocabulary

Mystery (тайна), call something in question (ставить что-либо под сомнение), dissection (вскрытие), cerebral tissue (мозговая ткань), coma (кома), heart attack (сердечный приступ), psychosis (mental disease) (психоз), schizophrenia (шизофрения), abnormally (ненормально), mental derangement (душевные расстройства), dying condition (предсмертное состояние), experience (feel) (испытывать), depress (угнетает), metabolism (обмен веществ), nutrient substances (питательные вещества).

Text 2

Pre-reading task

Absent-mindedness is just the start of memory problems. When the brain distorts the past, our view of who we are suffers.

• What do you know about it?

• What could be its reasons?

• Is it a problem of age?

Reading

If you can’t recall facts, figures or words, if you often lose things or forget what to do for your English classes, help is close at hand. There’s a tremendous range of methods to boost your memory. Read the text and choose a method!

How to Boost Your Memory

Your memory is like a brilliant, but unreliable computer storing a vast amount of information. In fact the memory’s capacity is theoretically unlimited. The brain can record more than 86 billion bits of information every day and our memories can probably hold 100 trillion bits in a lifetime.

Nevertheless only about 200 per cent of our daily experience is registered, and of that only a tiny proportion is loaded into long term memory. Most of the images and ideas that pass through our minds during a day are held for only 25 to 30 seconds. This is just long enough for us to be able to keep the words of a sentence in our head as we read it so we understand its meaning.

We also remember different things in two different ways: declarative and non-declarative. Declarative memory deals with concrete things, specific events and facts such as what we have been doing and our recall of things that have happened. Non-declarative memory includes knowledge or general things, how to ride a bicycle, how to behave and so on. Someone with amnesia will almost always remember how to ride a bike, but may well forget her own name. One sad victim of this type of amnesia announces every ten minutes that he has ‘just woken up’. Every time his wife comes into the room he throws his arms around her as if he has not seen her for years, even though she has only been gone for a few minutes. Yet this man, formerly a highly-talented musician, is still able to play the piano and conduct a choir through a long and complicated concert piece.

Normal, healthy people can improve their memories very easily. First of all learn to relax if you are trying to memorise something. You may miss important items if your mind is on something else or if you weren’t paying attention because of anxiety – you retain information best when you are alert and concentrating. If you are having trouble concentrating, increase the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain. Despite its small size the brain uses 20 per cent of the body’s oxygen requirements. So try to combine study with exercise, particularly the kind of exercise that gets you breathing faster. Keep your mind fit as well as your body by doing mental workouts. Crosswords, Scrabbles and quizzes all help to keep the mind in shape.

You can also train your memory in certain ways. The ancient Greeks invented memory systems called mnemonics, and they still work today. Most systems involve associating the things you want to remember with something you already have safely stored in your head, and the most effective systems make use of visual imagery, smell, touch and sound. If you want to remember someone’s name, try to find something distinctive about their hair, nose or eyes to associate with the name, e.g. Janes’s wearing jewelry, Jim’s tall or Bill’s got a beard. If you want to remember numbers try to make associations between numbers in sequence – think of people’s ages, special dates, whether they’re odd or even.

Sometimes in order to prepare for a test you have to remember what you read in that thick textbook. Cramming the night before a test rarely works. Here is one method suggested by Ron Fry, author of a set of how-to-study books, including ‘Improve Your Memory’:

• Skim pages to get the general idea of the chapter.

• Go back and read the text carefully. Take notes on important parts. Just the act of writing notes will help you remember.

• Review notes. Come up with questions you think will be on your test – and make sure you know the answers.

A good night’s sleep can help you remember what you learned the day before. Experiments have found that students who sleep after studying recall more information than students who stay up all night studying.

Task 1

Give the interpretation of the following words in English:

to boost somebody’s memory, to store information, image, declarative memory, non-declarative memory, amnesia, talent, choir, anxiety, crossword, mnemonics.

Task 2

Say what you already know about people’s memory.

1. What are the kinds of memory?

2. Can people control their memory?

3. What does our memory depend on?

4. How to make your memory work? Give recommendations.

5. How does your memory influence your progress in humanitarian and pure sciences?

6. What do you do to remember English words? Do you have your own system?

Task 3

Render the text into English.