[科学美国人60秒] SSS 2015-11-19
时间：2018-12-24 作者：英语课 分类：2015年Scientific American(十一)月
英语课
Back in ancient times, philosophers like Aristoteles were early speculating about the origin of taste and how the tongue sends elements of taste, like sweet and bitter, salty and sour.
What we discovered just a few years ago is that a region of the brain cortex, where particular feels of neurons represent these different tastes again, say that sweet feel, the bitter feel, salty feel el at. N scientist national of health.
R. and his colleagues found that taste without a tongue at all. Simply by stimulating 1 the taste part of the brain, the cortex. They experiment in mind with a special sort of plan, a table that turn the neurons on with a pose of lazar light.
And by switching the bitter sensing part of the brain, they were able to as if they were tasting something better, even though absolutely nothing better was touching 2 the tongue of the mice.
In another experiment the researchers find that mice bitter in their tongues but then make it more by switching on the sweet in the brain as were there nothing better.
What we are doing here is adding the sweetness but only adding it in the brain not in what we were giving to the mouth. Think adding sugar in your coffee but doing it only in you mind. The results appeared in the journal Nature. R. suggest that a lot of basic judges about our taste, sweet means good, bitter means bad, are actually that air of the brain. And as for that virtual sugar for your coffee idea.
This would be something would be applied 3 to human. But today’s science fiction may be tomorrow’s artificial
1 stimulating
adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的
- shower gel containing plant extracts that have a stimulating effect on the skin 含有对皮肤有益的植物精华的沐浴凝胶
- This is a drug for stimulating nerves. 这是一种兴奋剂。