雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：What Dreams Are Made Of

雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：What Dreams Are Made Of

A

Thousands of years ago, dreams were seen as messages from the gods, and in many cultures, they are still considered prophetic.In ancient Greece, sick people slept at the temples of Asclepius, the god of medicine, in order to receive dreams that would heal them Modern dream science really begins at the end of the 19th century with Sigmund Freud, who theorized that dreams were the expression of unconscious desires often stemming from childhood. He believed that exploring these hidden emotions through analysis could help cure mental illness. The Freudian model of psychoanalysis dominated until the 1970s, when new research into the chemistry of the brain showed that emotional problems could have biological or chemical roots, as well as environmental ones. In other words, we weren’t sick just because of something our mothers did (or didn’t do), but because of some imbalance that might be cured with medication.

B

After Freud, the most important event in dream science was the discovery in the early 1950s of a phase of sleep characterized by intense brain activity and rapid eye movement (REM). People awakened in the midst of REM sleep reported vivid dreams, which led researchers to conclude that most dreaming took place during REM. Using the electroencephalograph (EEG), researchers could see that brain activity during REM resembled that of the waking brain. That told them that a lot more was going on at night than anyone had suspected. But what, exactly?

C

Scientists still don’t know for sure, although they have lots of theories. On one side are scientists like Harvard’s Allan Hobson, who believes that dreams are essentially random. In the 1970s, Hobson and his colleague Robert McCarley proposed what they called the “activation-synthesis hypothesis,” which describes how dreams are formed by nerve signals sent out during REM sleep from a small area at the base of the brain called the pons. These signals, the researchers said, activate the images that we call dreams. That put a crimp in dream research; if dreams were meaningless nocturnal firings, what was the point of studying them?

D

Adult humans spend about a quarter of their sleep time in REM, much of It dreaming. During that time, the body is essentially paralyzed but the brain is buzzing. Scientists using PET and fMRI technology to watch the dreaming brain have found that one of the most active areas during REM is the limbic system, which controls our emotions. Much less active is the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with logical thinking. That could explain why dreams in REM sleep often lack a coherent story line. (Some researchers have also found that people dream in non-REM sleep as well, although those dreams generally are less vivid.) Another active part of the brain in REM sleep is the anterior cingulate cortex, which detects discrepancies. Eric Nofzinger, director of the Sleep Neuroimaging Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, thinks that could be why people often figure out thorny problems in their dreams. “It’s as if the brain surveys the internal milieu and tries to figure out what it should be doing, and whether our actions conflict with who we are,” he says.

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雅思阅读真题题目：

Questions 27-31

Reading passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct number, A-G, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

27 Reference of an artist’ s dreams.

28 Dream actually happens in animals

29 Dreams are related with benefit and happiness

30 Scientists’ advanced technology used in investigation of REM stage

31 Concern about usefulness of dreams

Questions 32-34

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 32-34 on your answer sheet.

32 What were dreams regarded as by ancient people?

A superstation and unreliable

B communication with Gods and chance to foresee future

C medical relief for children with illness

D messages to make them feel better when woke up

33 According to Paragraph D, which part of brain controls reasoning?

A anterior cingulate cortex

B internal cortext

C limbic system

D prefrontal cortex

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