雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Smell and Memory: Smell like yesterday

雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：Smell and Memory: Smell like yesterday

Why does the scent of a fragrance or the mustiness of an old trunk trigger such powerful memories of childhood? New research has the answer, writes Alexandra Witze.

A. You probably pay more attention to a newspaper with your eyes than with your nose. But lift the paper to your nostrils and inhale. The smell of newsprint might carry you back to your childhood, when your parents perused the paper on Sunday mornings. Or maybe some other smell takes you back-the scent of your mother’s perfume, the pungency of a driftwood campfire. Specific odours can spark a flood of reminiscences.

Psychologists call it the “Proustian phenomeno” after French novelist Marcel Proust. Near the beginning of the masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, Proust’s narrator dunks a madeleine cookie into a cup of tea and the scent and taste unleash a torrent of childhood memories for 3000 pages.

B. Now, this phenomenon is getting the scientific treatment. Neuroscientists Rachel Herz, a cognitive neuroscientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, have discovered, for instance, how sensory memories are shared across the brain, with different brain regions remembering the sights, smells, tastes and sounds of a particular experience. Meanwhile, psychologists have demonstrated that memories triggered by smells can be more emotional, as well as more detailed, than memories not related to smells.

When you inhale, odour molecules set brain cells dancing within a region known as the imygdala ( E ) , a part of the brain that helps control emotion. In contrast, the other senses, such as taste or touch, get routed through other parts of the brain before reaching the amygdala. The direct link between odours and the amygdala may help explain the emotional potency of smells. ’’There is this unique connection between the sense of smell and the part of the brain that processes emotion,” says Rachel Herz.

C. But the links don’t stop there. Like an octopus reaching its tentacles outward, the memory of smells affects other brain regions as well. In recent experiments, neuroscientists at University College London (UCL) asked 15 volunteers to look at pictures while smelling unrelated odours. For instance, the subjects might see a photo of a duck paired with the scent of a rose, and then be asked to create a story linking the two.

Brain scans taken at the time revealed that the volunteers’ brains were particularly active in a region known as the factory cortex, which is known to be involved in processing smells. Five minutes later, the volunteers were shown the duck photo again, but without the rose smell. And in their brains, the olfactory cortex lit up again, the scientists reported recently. The fact that the olfactory cortex became active in the absence of the odour suggests that people’s sensory memory of events is spread across different brain regions.

Imagine going on a seaside holiday, says UCL team leader, Jay Gottfried. The sight of the waves becomes stored in one area, whereas the crash of the surf goes elsewhere, and the smell of seaweed in yet another place. There could be advantageous to having memories spread around the brain. ’’You can reawaken that memory from any one of the sensory triggers,” says Gottfried. “Maybe the smell of the sun lotion, or a particular sound from that day, or the sight of a rock formation.” Or – in the case of an early hunter and gatherer (out on a plain – the sight of a lion might be enough to trigger the urge to flee, rather than having to wait for the sound of its roar and the stench of its hide to kick in as well.

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Questions 1-5

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-C) with opinions or deeds below.

Write the appropriate letters A-C in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

NB: you may use any letter more than once

A Rachel Herz

B Simon Chu

C Jay Gottfried

1  Found pattern of different sensory memories stored in various zones of a brain.

2  Smell brings detailed event under a smell of certain substance.

3  Connection of smell and certain zones of brain is different with that of other senses.

4  Diverse locations of stored information help US keep away the hazard.

5  There is no necessary correlation between smell and processing zone of brain.

Questions 6-9

Choose the correct letter, A, B, c or D.

Write your answers in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.

6. In paragraph B, what do the experiments conducted by Herz and other scientists show?

A Women are more easily addicted to opium medicine

B Smell is superior to other senses in connection to the brain

C Smell is more important than other senses

D certain part of brain relates the emotion to the sense of smell

7. What does the second experiment conducted by Herz suggest?

A Result directly conflicts with the first one

B Result of her first experiment is correct

C Sights and sounds trigger memories at an equal level

D Lawnmower is a perfect example in the experiment

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