英语高级视听说下原文.docx

1、英语高级视听说下原文UNIT3 A PILL TO FORGET(CBS) If there were something you could take after experiencing a painful ortraumatic event that would permanently weaken your memory of what had justhappened, would you take it? As correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, it s an ideamay not be so far off, and that has so

2、me critics alarmed, and some trauma victimsfilled with hope.I couldnt get my body to stop shaking. I was trembling, constantly trembling.Memories of it would just come back, reoccurring over and over and over, subwayconductor Beatriz Arguedas recalls.Last Sept. 30, Beatriz was driving her normal rou

3、te on the Red Line in Boston whenone of her worst fears came to pass: Upon entering one of the busiest stations, aman jumped in front of my train, to commit suicide, she explains.Beatriz saw the man jump. We sort of made eye contact and then I felt the thudfrom him hitting the train and then the cra

4、ckling sound underneath the train and,then, of course, my heart starts thumping, she recalls.She came into our emergency room afterwards, very upset. No physical injury.Entirely a psychological trauma, says Dr. Roger Pitman, a psychiatrist at HarvardMedical School who has studied and treated patient

5、s with post-traumatic stressdisorder, or PTSD, for 25 years.Theyre caught up so much with this past event that its constantly in their mind,Pitman explains. Theyre living it over and over and over as if its happening again.And they just cant get involved in real life.When Beatriz arrived in the emer

6、gency room, Pitman enrolled her in an experimental study of a drug called propranolol, a medication commonly used forhigh blood pressure . and unofficially for stage fright. Pitman thought it might dosomething almost magical trick Beatriz s brain into m awkei nagk ear memory of theevent she had just

7、 experienced.In the study, which is still under way, half the subjects get propranolol; half get aplacebo.Asked whether he knows if Beatriz got the drug or the placebo, Dr. Pitman says hehas no idea and neither does she, and that the research team wont know foranother two years.If Pitman is right, t

8、he results could fundamentally change the way accident victims,rape victims, even soldiers are treated after they experience trauma.The story begins with some surprising discoveries about memory. It turns out ourmemories are sort of like Jello they take time to solidify in our brains. And while they

9、re setting, its possible to make them stronger or weaker. It all depends on thestress hormone adrenaline.The man who discovered this is James McGaugh, a professor of neurobiology at theUniversity of California, Irvine.McGaugh studies memory in rats, and he invited Stahl to watch the making of a rat

10、memory in this case how a rat whos never been in this tank of water before learnshow to find a clear plastic platform just below the surface.Hell swim around randomy,l McGaugh explains. The rat cannot see the platform,since his eyes are on the top of his head.The rat will swim around the edge for a

11、long time, until eventually he ventures outand by chance bumps into the platform. The next day, hell find the platform a littlebit faster.But another rat, who had learned where the platform was the day prior, and thenreceived a shot of adrenaline immediately afterwards, today swam instantly to thepl

12、atform.Adrenaline actually made this rats brain remember better, and McGaugh believesthe same thing happens in people. Suppose I said to you, You know, Ive watchedyour programs a lot over the years, and although it pains me to have to tell you this, Ithink youre one of worst people Ive ever seen on

13、nt take itn, odwondtotake itpersonally, McGaugh says.So, my stress system would go into overdrive, no question, Stahl says.Even with my telling you that its not true, theres nothing to keep you from blushing,from feeling warm all over, McGaugh points out. Thats the adrenaline. And I daresay that you

14、re gonna remember my having said that long after youve forgotten theother details of our discussion here. I guarantee it.McGaugh says that s why we remember important and emotional e viennot su r livesmore than regular day-to-day experiences. The next step in his research was to seewhat would happen

15、 when adrenaline was blocked; he started experimenting withpropranolol.Propranolol sits on that nerve cell and blocks it, so that, think of this as being a key,and this is a lock, the hole in the lock is blocked because of propranolol sitting there.So adrenaline can be present, but it cant do its jo

16、b, McGaugh explains.McGaugh showed Stahl a third rat that had learned where the platform was on the previous day and then received an injection of propranolol. The next day, the ratswam around the edge, as if he had forgotten there ever was a platform out there.Across the country at Harvard, Roger P

17、itman read McGaughs studies and a light bulbwent on. When I read about this, I said, This has got to be how post-traumaticstress disorder works. Because think about what happens to a person. First of all,they have a horribly traumatic event, and they have intense fear and helplessness. So that inten

18、se fear and helplessness is gonna stimulate adrenaline, Pitman says. Andthen what do we find three months or six months or 20 years later? Excessivelystrong memories.Pitman figured he could block that cycle by giving trauma victims propranolol rightaway . before adrenaline could make the memories to

19、o strong. He started recruitingpatients for a small pilot study. One of the first was Kathleen Logue, a paralegal whohad been knocked down in the middle of a busy Boston street by a bicyclist.He just hit the whole left side of my body. And it seemed like forever that I waslaying in the middle of Sta

20、te Street, downtown Boston, Logue remembers.She says she was terrified that she was just going to get run over.As part of the study, Logue took propranolol four times a day for 10 days. Like theothers who got the drug, three months later she showed no physiological signs ofPTSD, while several subjec

21、ts who got a placebo did. Those results got Pitman fundingfor a larger study by the National Institutes of Health.But then the President s Council on Bioethics condemned the study in a report thatsaid our memories make us who we are and that re-writing memoriespharmacologically risks undermining our

22、 truetiitdye.nThis is a quote. It risks making shameful acts seem less shameful or terrible acts lessterrible than they really are, Stahl reads to Logue. A terrible act, she replies. Why should you have to live with it every day of yourlife? It doesnt erase the fact that it happened. It doesnt erase

23、 your memory of it. Itmakes it easier to remember and function.David Magnus, director of Stanford University s Center for Biomedical Ethics, says heworries that it wont be just trauma victims trying to dull painful memories. From the point of view of a pharmaceutical industry, theyre going to have e

24、veryinterest in having as many people as possible diagnosed with this condition and haveit used as broadly as possible. Thats the reality of how drugs get introduced andutilized, Magnus argues.Hes concerned it will be used for trivial reasons. If I embarrass myself at a partyFriday night and instead

25、 of feeling bad about it I could take a pill then Im going toavoid not have to avoid making a fool of myself at parties, Magnus says.So you think that that embarrassment and all of that is teaching us? Stahl asks.Absolutely, Magnus says. Our breakups, our relationships, as painful as they are,we lea

26、rn from some of those painful experiences. They make us better people.But while the ethicists debate the issue, the science is moving forward. Researchershave shown in rat studies that propranolol can also blunt old memories.Pitman wondered: Could it work in humans? He teamed up with Canadian collea

27、gueAlain Brunet, who searched for people with long-standing PTSD, like Rita Magil. Shehad suffered for three years from nightmares after a life-threatening car accident.Another study subject is Louise ODonnell-Jasmin, who was raped by a doctor at theage of 12. He raped me on his desk, on a chair, an

28、d on the floor. It, for me, it was likeI was dying inside, she remembers. The world had ended.ODonnell-Jasmin was haunted by the rape for more than 30 years. She never feltcomfortable undressing in front of her husband and suffered from recurrentflashbacks and nightmares.The study was simple: Subjec

29、ts came in and were asked to think about and writedown every detail they could remember about their trauma; in Magils case, her caraccident, reactivating the memory in her brain. She was then given propranolol.Rita says she suffered no side effects.A week later, electrodes measured her body s stress

30、 response as she listened to aretelling of her trauma. Asked what happened, Magil says, No reaction.And she says she had no more nightmares.The patient who made the most dramatic recovery turned out to be ODonnell-Jasmin, but theres a catch, because she was in a control group andtherefore wasn t sup

31、posed to improve at all.ODonnell-Jasmin was given propranolol, but unlike Magil, she took the drug whilewatching a pleasant movie, not after telling every detail about her rape. And yet, aweek later, she noticed a change. I wake up. And I find myself undressing. And myhusband is there. And I realize

32、 Im undressing, and Im not feeling as though I need tohide under the bed anymore, she explains.Asked if it is gone, ODonnell-Jasmin says, Yes. The link, what held the emotions tothe memories, its like the umbilical cord has been cut. And there is no way I canaccess the emotions anymore. And furthermore, e