为什么音乐令我们的大脑歌唱.docVIP

Why Music Makes Our Brain Sing 为什么音乐令我们的大脑歌唱 MUSIC is not tangible. You can’t eat it, drink it or mate with it. It doesn’t protect against the rain, wind or cold. It doesn’t vanquish predators or mend broken bones. And yet humans have always prized music — or well beyond prized, loved it. 音乐是看不见摸不着的东西，不能吃也不能喝，更不能与它发生肉体的接触。它不能帮你遮风挡雨，保暖御寒。不能帮你击溃敌人，也不能为你愈合断骨。但人类却总是珍视音乐——或者比珍视更甚——我们热爱它。 In the modern age we spend great sums of money to attend concerts, download music files, play instruments and listen to our favorite artists whether we’re in a subway or salon. But even in Paleolithic times, people invested significant time and effort to create music, as the discovery of flutes carved from animal bones would suggest. 现代人花很多钱去听音乐会、下载音乐、演奏乐器，聆听心爱艺术家的作品，不管置身地铁还是沙龙。但是考古学家发现，早在旧石器时代就有由动物骨头制成的笛子，足以说明那时人们就花费大量时间与努力去创作音乐。 So why does this thingless “thing” — at its core, a mere sequence of sounds — hold such potentially enormous intrinsic value? 音乐的核心无非只是一系列声音而已，那么，为什么这种没有形体的事物蕴含着如此巨大的本质价值？ The quick and easy explanation is that music brings a unique pleasure to humans. Of course, that still leaves the question of why. But for that, neuroscience is starting to provide some answers. 快速简单的解释是，音乐可以为人类带来独特的欢愉。当然，这仍然不能解释“为什么”这个问题。但是基于这一点，神经科学可以提供若干答案。 More than a decade ago, our research team used brain imaging to show that music that people described as highly emotional engaged the reward system deep in their brains — activating subcortical nuclei known to be important in reward, motivation and emotion. Subsequently we found that listening to what might be called “peak emotional moments” in music — that moment when you feel a “chill” of pleasure to a musical passage — causes the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, an essential signaling molecule in the brain. 十几年前，我们的研究团队使用大脑成像技术，显示被人们描绘为“非常感人”的音乐如何作用于大脑深处负责奖赏系统 reward system 的脑区——我们知道，触发皮质下核 subcortical nuclei 在奖赏系统，以及行为动机与感情系统中是非常重要的。最后我们发现，聆听音乐中所谓“情感的高潮时刻”（就是那些让你听到“起鸡皮疙瘩”的那些乐段），会导致大脑释放神经传递素多巴胺，这是大脑中一种必不可少的信号传递分子。 When pleas