剑桥雅思12Test7Passage3阅读原文翻译 Music and the emotions 音乐与情感
剑桥雅思12阅读第七套题目第三篇文章的主题为音乐与情感。文章一共六段，分别介绍了音乐能引发人们的生理反应，科学实验的两项发现，乐曲结构设计与刺激多巴胺神经元的关系，贝多芬作品的证明，以及音乐的精华在于其不可预测性。下面是具体每一段的翻译。
点击查看这篇雅思阅读中需要大家掌握的重点词汇以及对应的答案解析：
雅思真题阅读词汇 剑桥雅思12 test 7 passage 3 音乐与情感 music and emotions
剑桥雅思12Test7Passage3阅读答案解析 Music and the emotions 音乐与情感
剑桥雅思12 Test7 Passage3阅读原文翻译
第1段
Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deeply. When listening to our favourite songs, our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal. The pupils in our eyes dilate, our pulse and blood pressure rise, the electrical conductance of our skin is lowered, and the cerebellum, a brain region associated with bodily movement, becomes strangely active. Blood is even re-directed to the muscles in our legs. In other words, sound stirs us at our biological roots.
音乐为什么能让我们有所触动？一方面，音乐是种完全抽象的艺术形式，没有任何语言或者清晰的想法。但即便音乐什么都没有说，它仍然可以触及我们的心底深处。当听到我们最喜爱的歌曲时，我们的身体会显示出各种情绪受到激发的现象。眼睛瞳孔会扩张，心跳加快，血压上升，皮肤的电导率会下降，而小脑-与身体运动有关的大脑区域-会变得异常活跃。血液甚至会重新导入我们腿部的肌肉。换句话说，声音会从我们最深处的生物根源撩动我们。
第2段
A recent paper in Nature Neuroscience by a research team in Montreal, Canada, marks an important step in revealing the precise underpinnings of ‘the potent pleasurable stimulus‘ that is music. Although the study involves plenty of fancy technology, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) and ligand-based positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, the experiment itself was rather straightforward. After screening 217 individuals who responded to advertisements requesting people who experience ‘chills’ to instrumental music, the scientists narrowed down the subject pool to ten. They then asked the subjects to bring in their playlist of favourite songs – virtually every genre was represented, from techno to tango – and played them the music while their brain activity was monitored. Because the scientists were combining methodologies (PET and fMRI), they were able to obtain an impressively exact and detailed portrait of music in the brain. The first thing they discovered is that music triggers the production of dopamine – a chemical with a key role in setting people’s moods – by the neurons (nerve cells) in both the dorsal and ventral regions of the brain. As these two regions have long been linked with the experience of pleasure, this finding isn’t particularly surprising.
最近由加拿大蒙特利尔的一个研究团队发表在《自然神经科学》上的一篇论文标志着在揭示音乐这一“强烈愉悦刺激”的本质上向前迈出了一步。虽然该研究涉及到许多高端技术，包括功能性核磁共振成像以及基于配体的正电子释放层成像扫描，但实验自身其实十分简单明了。在对217名响应广告的个体进行筛选之后（广告征集那些听到器乐感到“全身颤抖”的人），科学家将实验对象缩小到10人。然后，他们让这些人提供自己最喜欢的歌曲的播放清单-几乎包括了所有风格，从科技电音到探戈曲目等等，并在为他们播放这些音乐的时候对他们的大脑活动进行监测。由于科学家结合了PET和fMRI这两种方法，他们可以获得大脑中音乐十分准确细致的图像。他们的第一个发现是，音乐刺激大脑背面和腹面的神经元产生多巴胺-一种调节人们情绪的关键化学物质。由于这两个区域早已被证明与愉悦的体验有关，这一发现并不是很让人惊讶。
第3段
What is rather more significant is the finding that the dopamine neurons in the caudate – a region of the brain involved in learning stimulus-response associations, and in anticipating food and other ‘reward’ stimuli – were at their most active around 15 seconds before the participants’ favourite moments in the music. The researchers call this the ‘anticipatory phase’； and argue that the purpose of this activity is to help us predict the arrival of our favourite part. The question, of course, is what all these dopamine neurons are up to. Why are they so active in the period preceding the acoustic climax? After all, we typically associate surges of dopamine with pleasure, with the processing of actual rewards. And yet, this cluster of cells is most active when the ‘chills’ have yet to arrive, when the melodic pattern is still unresolved.
更重要的一项发现是，尾状核（大脑区域中负责学习刺激-应激关联和预期食物与其他奖励刺激的区域）中的多巴胺神经元在实验对象最喜欢的乐曲部分到来之前的15秒处于最活跃的状态。研究者文章来自老烤鸭雅思将其称之为“预期阶段”，并认为这一活动的目的是帮助我们迎接最喜欢的部分的到来。当然，问题在于这些多巴胺神经元究竟想做什么。它们为什么在乐曲高潮之前如此活跃？毕竟，我们通常将多巴胺的激增与愉悦，以及处理实际的奖励联系在一起。然而，这些细胞在“颤抖”还没到来，在旋律结构尚未完全展开的时候就处于最活跃的状态。
第4段
One way to answer the question is to look at the music and not the neurons. While music can often seem (at least to the outsider) like a labyrinth of intricate patterns, it turns out that the most important part of every song or symphony is when the patterns break down, when the sound becomes unpredictable. If the music is too obvious, it is annoyingly boring, like an alarm clock. Numerous studies, after all, have demonstrated that dopamine neurons quickly adapt to predictable rewards. If we know what’s going to happen next, then we don’t get excited. This is why composers often introduce a key note in the beginning of a song, spend most of the rest of the piece in the studious avoidance of the pattern, and then finally repeat it only at the end. The longer we are denied the pattern we expect, the greater the emotional release when the pattern returns, safe and sound.
回答该问题的一种方法是研究音乐而非神经元。虽然音乐常常像精致模式组成的迷宫一样（至少在外人看来），但每首歌或者交响曲最重要的部分其实发生在这些模式破裂，声音变得不可预测的时候。如果音乐模式太过明显，它就会变得像闹钟一样无聊至极，惹人厌烦。毕竟，无数的研究都证明多巴胺神经元会快速适应可预测的奖励。如果我们知道接下来会发生什么，那么我们就不会变的兴奋。因此，作曲家经常会在一首歌开始的地方引入一个关键音符，在接下来的篇幅中竭尽全力避免出现该模式，然后只在结尾的地方对它进行重复。我们期待该模式却不得的时间越长，当这一模式最终圆满回归的时候，我们的情感释放也会越强烈。
第5段
To demonstrate this psychological principle, the musicologist Leonard Meyer, in his classic book Emotion and Meaning in Music (1956), analysed the 5th movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131. Meyer wanted to show how music is defined by its flirtation with – but not submission to – our expectations of order. Meyer dissected 50 measures (bars) of the masterpiece, showing how Beethoven begins with the clear statement of a rhythmic and harmonic pattern and then, in an ingenious tonal dance, carefully holds off repeating it. What Beethoven does instead is suggest variations of the pattern. He wants to preserve an element of uncertainty in his music, making our brains beg for the one chord he refuses to give us. Beethoven saves that chord for the end.
为了证实这一心理学原理，音乐学家Leonard Meyer在他发表于1956年的经典著作《音乐中的情绪与意义》中，分析了贝多芬弦乐四重奏升C小调131号作品中的第五乐章。Meyer希望展示出，音乐如何通过挑逗而非服从我们对秩序的期待定义自身。Meyer分解了这首大师之作的50个小节，由此展示贝多芬如何以节奏分明并和谐的模式开始，然后在接下来独具匠心的音符舞蹈中小心翼翼地避免重复它。贝多芬所做的是暗示该模式的种种变化。他希望在他的音乐中保留一种不确定的元素，让我们的大脑祈求那一组他拒绝赐予我们的和弦。贝多芬将那组和弦一直留到最后。
第6段
According to Meyer, it is the suspenseful tension of music, arising out of our unfulfilled expectations, that is the source of the music’s feeling. While earlier theories of music focused on the way a sound can refer to the real world of images and experiences – its ‘connotative‘ meaning – Meyer argued that the emotions we find in music come from the unfolding events of the music itself. This ‘embodied meaning’ arises from the patterns the symphony invokes and then ignores. It is this uncertainty that triggers the surge of dopamine in the caudate, as we struggle to figure out what will happen next. We can predict some of the notes, but we can’t predict them all, and that is what keeps us listening, waiting expectantly for our reward, for the pattern to be completed.
根据Meryer的看法，正是音乐这种从我们得不到满足的期望中诞生的悬而未决的张力构成音乐触及我们感受的根源。虽然音乐的早期理论关注于声音指向真实世界图像或经验的方式-即它的“隐晦”含义，Meryer认为我们在音乐中发现的种种情感来自于音乐本身所展开的事项。这一“体现型含义”来自于交响乐所激发又可以忽视的模式。正是这种不确定性引发尾状核中多巴胺的激增，因为我们会努力弄清楚接下来要发生什么。我们能够预测到一些音符，但我们无法预测到所有的旋律。这是这一点让我们继续听下去，充满期待地等待着我们的奖励，等待着模式最终完成。
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