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hly_2009 (abc_123)
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Why We Love(e-c)practice

Why We Love
为什么我们相爱

Image Attachment: love.JPG (2008-1-20 08:43 PM, 17.07 K)

Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008 By JEFFREY KLUGER
Enlarge Photo
Photo Illustration by Ann Cutting

The last time you had sex, there was arguably not a thought in your head. O.K., if it was very familiar sex with a very familiar partner, the kind that—truth be told—you probably have most of the time, your mind may have wandered off to such decidedly nonerotic matters as balancing your checkbook or planning your week. If it was the kind of sex you shouldn't have been having in the first place—the kind you were regretting even as it was taking place—you might have already been flashing ahead to the likely consequences. But if it was that kind of sex that's the whole reason you took up having sex in the first place—the out-of-breath, out-of-body, can-you-believe-this-is-actually-happening kind of sex—the rational you had probably taken a powder.

  上次你做爱时，基本上头脑中没想东西--好吧--如果是和一位非常熟悉的伙伴过着非常熟悉的性生活--那种--老实说--你大概大部分时候脑子里走神到绝对是非色情的事物上去的性。例如:平衡开支，或计划这周的活动。如果这次做爱是你本身首先就不应该去做--即便在发生的时候就让你反悔的那种--大概你已经闪现出可能的后果了。但是，如果是那种做爱本身就是你的第一原因--那种无法呼吸、销魂、难以置信的性--那么，你拥有的理性很快就消失。

Losing our faculties over a matter like sex ought not to make much sense for a species like ours that relies on its wits. A savanna full of predators, after all, was not a place to get distracted. But the lure of losing our faculties is one of the things that makes sex thrilling—and one of the very things that keeps the species going. As far as your genes are concerned, your principal job while you're alive is to conceive offspring, bring them to adulthood and then obligingly die so you don't consume resources better spent on the young. Anything that encourages you to breed now and breed plenty gets that job done.

  对一个像我们这样依靠于机智的种族--人类来说，为何会在性事上丧失了力量这点上应该说不通。毕竟，充满捕食者的热带稀树大草原并不是一个会让人分心的地方。但是，在失去力量中的诱惑是激情所在--也是保持种族繁衍的一样东西。从我们的基因来看，在活着的时候，主要任务就是繁育后代，把后代养育成人，然后乐然死去，这就不会耗费如果花在年轻一代身上要更要的资源。任何鼓励你现在繁衍、多多繁衍的事物能把这一任务完成。

But mating and the rituals surrounding it make us come unhinged in other ways too, ones that are harder to explain by the mere babymaking imperative. There's the transcendent sense of tenderness you feel toward a person who sparks your interest. There's the sublime feeling of relief and reward when that interest is returned. There are the flowers you buy and the poetry you write and the impulsive trip you make to the other side of the world just so you can spend 48 hours in the presence of a lover who's far away. That's an awful lot of busywork just to get a sperm to meet an egg—if merely getting a sperm to meet an egg is really all that it's about.

  但是，交配行为和相关仪式也使我们会去在其它的方面“失控”。这些方面那难用生小孩这个必须来解释。对一个激发你兴趣的人，你会感到一种奇妙的亲切。当你的这份兴趣获得相应，那么就会出现极度宽慰和奖励感。有人买花、有人作诗、或者有人一时冲动到地球那一边只为和你远方心爱的人呆上48小时。如果这一切都只是为了让一颗精子和卵子相遇--如果只是让一颗精子和一个卵子相遇就是全部的话---这也太麻烦了。

Human beings make a terrible fuss about a lot of things but none more than romance. Eating and drinking are just as important for keeping the species going—more so actually, since a celibate person can at least continue living but a starving person can't. Yet while we may build whole institutions around the simple ritual of eating, it never turns us flat-out nuts. Romance does. "People compose poetry, novels, sitcoms for love," says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and something of the Queen Mum of romance research. "They live for love, die for love, kill for love. It can be stronger than the drive to stay alive."

  对许多事，人类都会小题大做，但最小题大做莫过于浪漫爱情。吃、喝对种族繁衍也同等重要--事实上，它们更总要，因为，至少独生主义者能维持自己的生命，而饥饿的人则无法做到。虽然对吃，我们也许建立了许多惯例，但是，吃从不会把我们变成“痴呆”。浪漫爱情会。Helen Fisher说：“人们创作出有关爱情的诗、小说、电视剧”。Helen Fisher是一位Rutgers大学的人类学家，可谓是是研究浪漫研究方面的“皇太后”。 “他们为爱而生、为爱而死、为爱而杀戮、爱的冲动大于活着的冲动”

On its good days (and love has a lot of them), all this seems to make perfect sense. Nearly 30 years ago, psychologist Elaine Hatfield of the University of Hawaii and sociologist Susan Sprecher now of Illinois State University developed a 15-item questionnaire that ranks people along what the researchers call the passionate-love scale. Hatfield has administered the test in places as varied as the U.S., Pacific islands, Russia, Mexico, Pakistan and, most recently, India and has found that no matter where she looks, it's impossible to squash love. "It seemed only people in the West were goofy enough to marry for passionate love," she says. "But in all of the cultures I've studied, people love wildly."

  在“爱” 的鼎盛期(爱有很多的鼎盛期），所有这些道理都很清楚。在近30年前，心理学家Hawaii大学的Elaine Hatfield和伊利诺州大学的社会学家Susan Sprecher制作了一份由15个问题组成的调查问卷。它们用于评估人们对所谓“性情-爱”打分。 Hatfield在美国、太平洋岛、俄国、墨西哥、巴基斯坦和最近印度进行测验，发现不论在进行调查的地点在哪里，都不可能把爱粉碎。她说：“似乎只有西方人会笨得为强烈爱情而结婚，但是，在所有文化中，人们都会为爱而疯狂”

What scientists, not to mention the rest of us, want to know is, Why? What makes us go so loony over love? Why would we bother with this elaborate exercise in fan dances and flirtations, winking and signaling, joy and sorrow? "We have only a very limited understanding of what romance is in a scientific sense," admits John Bancroft, emeritus director of the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Ind., a place where they know a thing or two about the way human beings pair up. But that limited understanding is expanding. The more scientists look, the more they're able to tease romance apart into its individual strands—the visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, neurochemical processes that make it possible. None of those things may be necessary for simple procreation, but all of them appear essential for something larger. What that something is—and how we achieve it— is only now coming clear.

  科学家们想要知道的是，为什么，更别说我们了。是什么让我们如此为爱疯癫？为什么要我们跳扇子舞、调情、眼色、信号、快乐、悲哀？来自印第安纳州Bloomington的金赛学院（对为何男女结对很有了解的一家机构）名誉退休主任 John Bancroft称：“在科学领域，我们对浪漫爱情的理解非常有限” 但是，有限的理解正在扩大。科学家们观察越多，将对浪漫爱情更清晰分明--引起爱的视觉、听觉、嗅觉、触觉、和神经化学过程。就生殖来而言，所有这些也许都不是必要的，但是，对比简单的“繁衍”要更”大“的某样东西来说似乎是必须。现在，到底那样东西是什么--我们要如何获得--直到现在才正变得清晰起来。

[ Last edited by hly_2009 at 2008-1-20 08:48 PM ]

2008-1-20 08:35 PM

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hly_2009 (abc_123)
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The Love Hunt
寻爱

If human reproductive behavior is a complicated thing, part of the reason is that it's designed to serve two clashing purposes. On the one hand, we're driven to mate a lot. On the other hand, we want to mate well so that our offspring survive. If you're a female, you get only a few rolls of the reproductive dice in a lifetime. If you're a male, your freedom to conceive is limited only by the availability of willing partners, but the demands of providing for too big a brood are a powerful incentive to limit your pairings to the female who will give you just a few strong young. For that reason, no sooner do we reach sexual maturity than we learn to look for signals of good genes and reproductive fitness in potential partners and, importantly, to display them ourselves. "Every living human is a descendant of a long line of successful maters," says David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. "We've adapted to pick certain types of mates and to fulfill the desires of the opposite sex."

  如果人类生殖行为是一件复杂的事，原因部分在于本身要满足互为冲突的两个目的：一方面，我们受到进行大量交配的驱使；另一方面，我们想交配质量高，这样让后代能存活。如果你是女性，一生中只有少数一些的繁殖机会。如果你是男性，要去使对方怀孕的机会只限于愿意的伙伴数，但是，可能抚养太多后会代限制你只会去和那位将给你带来少数强健后代的女性结合。因此，一旦性成熟后，我们就会学会在潜在对方那里寻找优秀基因和生殖健康的信号，重要的是，还在自己身上展现出这些。位于奥斯丁的德州大学进化心理学家David Buss说：”我们适应了去选择特别类型的配偶、满足异性的各种欲望“

One of the most primal of those desires is that a possible partner smells right. Good smells and bad smells are fundamentally no different from each other; both are merely volatile molecules wafting off an object and providing some clue as to the thing that emitted them. Humans, like all animals, quickly learn to assign values to those scents, recognizing that, say, putrefying flesh can carry disease and thus recoiling from its smell and that warm cookies carry the promise of vanilla, sugar and butter and thus being drawn to them. Other humans carry telltale smells of their own, and those can affect us in equally powerful ways.

  这些欲望中最原始的是正确的气味。好的气味和不好的气味基本来说没什么不同；两者都只是在人体飘出的散发性分子，它们提供一些有关释放者的线索。人类和动物一样会很快地把对这些气味价值做评估，意识到，比方说，化脓的肉会携带疾病、因此对其发出的气味会退缩；热甜饼闻起来可能有香草、糖和黄油，所以会吸引人们。人类也有自己”解释性“的气味，它们同样会具有强大的影响力。

The best-known illustration of the invisible influence of scent is the way the menstrual cycles of women who live communally tend to synchronize. In a state of nature, this is a very good idea. It's not in a tribe's or community's interests for one ovulating female to monopolize the reproductive attention of too many males. Better to have all the females become fertile at once and allow the fittest potential mates to compete with one another for them.

  气味的无形影响最著名的解释是群居女性的月经期往往会彼此相同。在自然状态下，这是一个非常好的主意。让一位排卵的女性独占太多男性的繁殖注意力，这不符合部落或群体的利益。最好是让所有的女性都同时具有孕育能力，并让潜在最适合男性彼此为她们竞争

But how does one female signal the rest? The answer is almost certainly smell. Pheromones—or scent-signaling chemicals—are known to exist among animals, and while scientists have had a hard time unraveling the pheromonal system in humans, they have isolated a few of the compounds. One type, known as driver pheromones, appears to affect the endocrine systems of others. Since the endocrine system plays a critical role in the timing of menstruation, there is at least a strong circumstantial case that the two are linked. "It's thought that there is a driver female who gives off something that changes the onset of menstruation in the other women," says chemist Charles Wysocki of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

  但是，女性是如何发出信号？可以几乎肯定地说是在于气味。外激素--或发出气味信号的化学物质--在动物身上存在，虽然在人类身上找到外激素系统时科学家们遇到过困难，但他们对一些化合物进行了隔离。一类被称之为”驱动型外激素“似乎会影响到别人的內分泌物系统。因为，內分泌物系统在月经期扮演了至关重要的角色，所以，至少两者存在。。” 来自费城的Monell化学感官中心的化学家Charles Wysocki说：“据说存在一种驱动型的女性释放出能让其它女性出现月经的某种物质”

It's not just women who respond to such olfactory cues. One surprising study published last October in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior showed that strippers who are ovulating average $70 in tips per hour; those who are menstruating make $35; those who are not ovulating or menstruating make $50. Other studies suggest that men can react in more romantic ways to olfactory signals. In work conducted by Martie Haselton, an associate professor of psychology at UCLA, women report that when they're ovulating, their partners are more loving and attentive and, significantly, more jealous of other men. "The men are picking up on something in their partner's behavior that tells them to do more mate-guarding," Haselton says.

  并非只有女性会对这种气味提示做出反应。去年十月，在《进化和人类行为》杂志就发表了一份令人惊讶的研究。它显示了那些在排卵时期跳脱衣舞的人每小时的小费达70美元；而那些月经时跳脱衣舞的人每小时的小费为35美元；那些既无排卵也无月经的为脱衣舞者为50美元/小时。而有别的研究表明男性对于排卵信号的反应会更加暧昧。在由加州大学洛杉矶分院的心理学副教授Martie Haselton进行的工作中，女性称当排卵时，对方会更深情、更多关注、而且会更吃其他男人的醋。Haselton说：“ 男性从伴侣的行为身上获得了某种东西在告诉他们要尽到更多男性保护义务的信号”

Scent not only tells males which females are primed to conceive, but it also lets both sexes narrow their choices of potential partners. Among the constellation of genes that control the immune system are those known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which influence tissue rejection. Conceive a child with a person whose MHC is too similar to your own, and the risk increases that the womb will expel the fetus. Find a partner with sufficiently different MHC, and you're likelier to carry a baby to term.

  气味不仅告诉男性哪些女性准备要受孕，而且还让两性缩小了潜在伴侣上选择范围。在控制免疫系统的众多基因中有一些被称为“主要组织相容性复合体”（MHC), 是它们影响了组织体之间的排斥性。和一位在MHC上和自己十分相似的人生孩子，那么子宫对胎儿的排斥风险性就增加。找一位MHC差异达到足够大的伴侣，那么怀上一个容纳性的宝宝可能性就更大。

2008-1-20 08:36 PM

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hly_2009 (abc_123)
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Studies show that laboratory mice can smell too-similar MHC in the urine of other mice and will avoid mating with those individuals. In later work conducted at the University of Bern in Switzerland, human females were asked to smell T shirts worn by anonymous males and then pick which ones appealed to them. Time and again, they chose the ones worn by men with a safely different MHC. And if the smell of MHC isn't a deal maker or breaker, the taste is. Saliva also contains the compound, a fact that Haselton believes may partly explain the custom of kissing, particularly those protracted sessions that stop short of intercourse. "Kissing," she says simply, "might be a taste test."

  据研究显示，实验室的老鼠能从另一只老鼠的尿中闻出过于相似的MHC，从而避免和那些个体交配。在后来由瑞士伯尔尼大学进行的工作中，人类女性被要求闻匿名男士的衬衫，然后选出吸引自己的那些。一次又一次地，她们选出的衬衫是在MHC差异程度达到安全的男性穿过。如果一位理想的冲裁者不是MHC，那么它一定是味道。唾液中同样含有这种化合物。这个事实被Haselton认为能够部分解释人们亲吻习惯，尤其那些没有出现性交的长期关系中。她简单地说道：”吻也许是一项味觉测试"

Precise as the MHC-detection system is, it can be confounded. One thing that throws us off the scent is the birth-control pill. Women who are on the Pill—which chemically simulates pregnancy—tend to choose wrong in the T-shirt test. When they discontinue the daily hormone dose, the protective smell mechanism kicks back in. "A colleague of mine wonders if the Pill may contribute to divorce," says Wysocki. "Women pick a husband when they're on birth control, then quit to have a baby and realize they've made a mistake."

  和MHC 探测系统完全一致的是，味道会被混淆。使我们从气味中迷失的一件东西是避孕药。服用避孕药的女性--化学方式刺激怀孕--往往会在“衬衫测试”中选错。当她们停止每日荷尔蒙的剂量，气味保护机制又会重新启动。 Wysocki说：”我的一名同事想知道是否避孕药促成了离婚。女性们在服用避孕药时择偶，然后停药，生育，后来就发现她们犯了一个错误“

Less surprising than the importance of the way a partner smells is the way that partner looks and sounds. Humans are suckers for an attractive face and a sexy shape. Men see ample breasts and broad hips as indicators of a woman's ability to bear and nurse children—though most don't think about such matters so lucidly. Women see a broad chest and shoulders as a sign of someone who can clobber a steady supply of meat and keep lions away from the cave. And while a hairy chest and a full beard have fallen out of favor in the waxed and buffed 21st century, they are historically—if unconsciously—seen as signs of healthy testosterone flow that gives rise to both fertility and strength.

  和对方气味的重要性相比，长相和声音的重要就不算惊讶了。人类是漂亮脸蛋和性感身材的追随者。男人把丰满的胸部和宽臀看作是女性生殖和养育后代能力的指示器--虽然大部分不会露骨去考虑这些事情。女人把男人的宽肩膀和胸膛看做是能提供稳定食物来源、驱走猎食者的迹象。虽然长胸毛的胸膛和洛腮胡也许在”净光、滑亮“的21世纪不再受到宠爱，但是从历史上来看，这两件--可能是无意识地--被视作是一种能提高生育和力量的健康睾丸激素的迹象。

A deep voice, also testosterone driven, can have similarly seductive power. Psychology professor David Feinberg of McMaster University in Ontario studied Tanzania's Hadza tribesmen, one of the world's last hunter-gatherer communities, and found that the richer and lower a man's voice, the more children he had. Researchers at the University of Albany recently conducted related research in which they had a sample group of 149 volunteers listen to recordings of men's and women's voices and then rate the way they sound on a scale from "very unattractive" to "very attractive." On the whole, the people whose voices scored high on attractiveness also had physical features considered sexually appealing, such as broad shoulders in men and a low waist-to-hip ratio in women. This suggests either that an alluring voice is part of a suite of sexual qualities that come bundled together or that simply knowing you look appealing encourages you to develop a voice to match. Causation and mere correlation often get muddied in studies like this, but either way, a sexy voice at least appears to sell the goods. "It might convey subtle information about body configuration and sexual behavior," says psychologist Gordon Gallup, who co-authored the study.The internal chemical tempest that draws us together hits Category 5 when sex gets involved. If it's easy for a glance to become a kiss and a kiss to become much more, that's because your system is trip-wired to make it hard to turn back once you're aroused. That the kiss is the first snare is no accident.

  也是受到睾丸激素的驱使的低沉声音有着同样的诱惑力。来自加拿大安大略McMaster大学心理学教授David Feinberg研究了世界上剩下最后的狩猎-采摘群体之一--坦桑尼亚Hadza的部落成员。他发现一名男子的声音越丰厚、低沉，拥有的孩子也越多。在奥尔巴尼大学最近进行的有关研究中，149名自愿者听了男人和女人的声音录音，然后按从”非常没有吸引力“到”非常有吸引力“程度进行打分。整体上讲，魅力值上得分高的人们同样被认为身体上具有性吸引力、例如：男性的宽肩，女性的低腰-臀比例。这意味着要么是一副诱人的嗓门是和别的人体特质不可分割、一道而来，要么就是单凭知道自己看上去很有吸引力就能鼓励去培养出一副与之比拟的嗓子。因果关系和相互联系往往在这类试验中是难以分清。但不论如何，至少有一副性感的声音是优势。心理学家、该研究报告的合著者Gordon Gallup说：“声音可能传达了身体和性方面的微妙信息” 。当性参与后，那种把我们拉到一块的内部化学风暴会达到最高级别。如果一个传眉会成为一个亲吻、一个亲吻成为更多，这都是因为你的系统在你一旦被激起了后，天生设计为很难回转。所以，轻吻是最先陷阱也就不是偶然。

Not only does kissing serve the utilitarian purpose of providing a sample of MHC, but it also magnifies the other attraction signals—if only as a result of proximity. Scent is amplified up close, as are sounds and breaths and other cues. And none of that begins to touch the tactile experience that was entirely lacking until intimate contact was made. "At the moment of a kiss, there's a rich and complicated exchange of postural, physical and chemical information," says Gallup. "There are hardwired mechanisms that process all this."

  不但亲吻起到了提供MHC样本的”自私“目的，而且放大对方吸引力信号--真希望那是亲密度的结果。就和声音、呼吸等一样，气味被近距离放大。这一切都不涉及触觉体验。触觉体验在亲密接触前是完全不存在的。 Gallup说：”在轻吻时刻，出现的是一个丰富、复杂姿势上的、身体上的和化学上的信息交换，是在内在机制下来进行这一步“

What's more, every kiss may also carry a chemical Mickey, slipped in by the male. Though testosterone is found in higher concentrations in men than in women, it is present in both genders and is critical in maintaining arousal states. Traces of testosterone make it into men's saliva, particularly among men who have high blood levels of the hormone to start with, and it's possible that a lot of kissing over a long period may be a way to pass some of that natural aphrodisiac to the woman, increasing her arousal and making her more receptive to even greater intimacy.

  而且，每个吻都带着一只由男方。。”魔法米老鼠“，虽然睾丸激素在男性身上的浓度比女性要大，但睾丸激素却是存在于两性中，并对维持勃起状态起了关键做用。微量的睾丸激素会在男性唾液中，尤其开始具有荷尔蒙高血压的。。长期大量轻吻可能是把天然催欲传给女性的一种方式，增加了女性情欲，使她对更加亲密具有更大接纳度。

2008-1-20 08:38 PM

练习翻译？遇到难题？快来翻吧

hly_2009 (abc_123)
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When Mating Becomes Love
当交配成了爱

If we've succeeded in becoming such efficient reproductive machines—equipped with both a generous appetite for mates and a cool ability to screen them for genetic qualities—why muddy things up with romance? For one thing, we may not be able to help it. Just being attracted to someone doesn't mean that that person is attracted back, and few things drive us crazier than wanting something we may not get. Cultural customs that warn against sex on the first date may have emerged for such practical reasons as avoiding pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, but they're also there for tactical reasons. Males or females who volunteer their babymaking services too freely may not be offering up very valuable genes. Those who seem more discerning are likelier to be holding a winning genetic hand—and are in a better position to demand one in return.

  当我们已经成为了如此有效的”繁殖机器“时--既有对配偶的“好胃口”，又具备冷静筛选获得高质量基因的能力--，那么为何出现了浪漫爱情上的迷惑不解？首先，也许可能我们是情不自禁。感觉自己喜欢某人不意味着那人会喜欢你，而又少有事物能让我们比在得不到某件东西时会更疯狂。告诫人们不要初次约会时就发生性的文化习俗也许是出于现实原因，如避免怀孕或性传播疾病这类的，但这些习俗的背后还有”战略“原因。那些过于随意主动提供生孩子“服务”的男性或女性也许所提供的基因价值不大。而那些”判断明锐“的人们更可能去牵上一位基因胜出者的手--在向对方提出同样要求时。。。

The elaborate ritual of dating is how this screening takes place. It's when that process pays off—when you finally feel you've found the right person—that the true-love thrill hits, and studies of the brain with functional magnetic resonance imagers (fMRIs) show why it feels so good. The earliest fMRIs of brains in love were taken in 2000, and they revealed that the sensation of romance is processed in three areas. The first is the ventral tegmental, a clump of tissue in the brain's lower regions, which is the body's central refinery for dopamine. Dopamine does a lot of jobs, but the thing we notice most is that it regulates reward. When you win a hand of poker, it's a dopamine jolt that's responsible for the thrill that follows. When you look forward to a big meal or expect a big raise, it's a steady flow of dopamine that makes the anticipation such a pleasure.

  约会的精心仪式是筛选进行方式。就是在这一过程带来回报时--即：当你最终感到找对了某位的时候--真爱便开始出现，采用功能磁共振成像（fMRI)对大脑的研究显示出为何感觉会非常好。最早采用这一技术分析爱情是在2000年，图像发现有三个大脑区域在处理爱情感：第一个区域是腹側被盖区，大脑底区域的一块组织，是人体多巴胺的中央”提炼厂“。多巴胺起到很多作用，但受到关注最大的是对奖励的调节功能。当我们赢得了一把扑克，是多巴胺产生了随之而来的兴奋。当我们期盼大餐或加薪，是多巴胺被稳定释放使这种期待是一种愉快。

Fisher and her colleagues have conducted recent fMRI scans of people who are not just in love but newly in love and have found that their ventral tegmental areas are working particularly hard. "This little factory near the base of the brain is sending dopamine to higher regions," she says. "It creates craving, motivation, goal-oriented behavior—and ecstasy."

  最近，Fisher和她的同事们对那些不但是相爱而且是新近相爱的人们做了功能磁共振成像扫描，发现腹側被盖区部分“工作量”尤其大。她说： “靠近大脑底部的这个"小工厂”把多巴胺送往了高位置大脑区域，这里产生了渴望、动力、以目标为导向的行为--还有心醉神迷“

When Love Becomes a Habit
当爱成为一种习惯

Even with its intoxicating supply of dopamine, the ventral tegmental couldn't do the love job on its own. Most people eventually do leave the poker game or the dinner table, after all. Something has to turn the exhilaration of a new partner into what can approach an obsession, and that something is the brain's nucleus accumbens, located slightly higher and farther forward than the ventral tegmental. Thrill signals that start in the lower brain are processed in the nucleus accumbens via not just dopamine but also serotonin and, importantly, oxytocin. If ever there was a substance designed to bind, it's oxytocin.

  即便腹側被盖区提供的是令人兴奋的多巴胺，但是腹側被盖区自身还是无法产生”爱“。毕竟，多数人都最终会离开牌桌、餐桌。必得有某样东西把新情侣的愉快心情变成一种接近于迷恋的东西；它就是大脑依伏神经核--它位于比腹側被盖区更高更远端处。从大脑低部发出的兴奋信号在这一区域被处理、不但要通过多巴胺，而且是血清素，以及更为重要的催产素。如果说是什么让男女产生结合的话，就是催产素。

New mothers are flooded with the stuff during labor and nursing—one reason they connect so ferociously to their babies before they know them as anything more than a squirmy body and a hungry mouth. Live-in fathers whose partners are pregnant experience elevated oxytocin too, a good thing if they're going to stick around through months of gestation and years of child-rearing. So powerful is oxytocin that a stranger who merely walks into its line of fire can suddenly seem appealing.

  在生产和护理孩子期间的新母亲有丰富的催产素--这就是为何当母亲在孩子只是“一个蜷曲和一张饿了的嘴的生命”时就有了强烈亲子相连感原因之一。和怀孕母亲同住一起的父亲也会经历催产素增加，如果他们能在妊娠期和随后的抚育其都在身边。。催产素太强大了，以至于只要进入其“影响范围之内”的任何陌生人都会立刻看上去有吸引力。

"In one study, an aide who was not involved with the birth of a baby would stand in a hospital room while the mother was in labor," says Sue Carter, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois. "The mothers later reported that they found the person very sympathetic, even though she was doing nothing at all."

  伊利诺斯大学精神病学教授Sue Carter称：”在一项研究中，没有涉及孩子出生的一位助手站在病房中，此时一名母亲正在分娩，后来母亲们她们觉得那个人非常有同情心，即便她根本什么也没做”

The last major stops for love signals in the brain are the caudate nuclei, a pair of structures on either side of the head, each about the size of a shrimp. It's here that patterns and mundane habits, such as knowing how to type and drive a car, are stored. Motor skills like those can be hard to lose, thanks to the caudate nuclei's indelible memory. Apply the same permanence to love, and it's no wonder that early passion can gel so quickly into enduring commitment. The idea that even one primal part of the brain is involved in processing love would be enough to make the feeling powerful. The fact that three are at work makes that powerful feeling consuming.

  ”爱的信号“在大脑中的"终点站"是尾状核，它们是脑部两侧的一对组织，每只大小和虾一般大。正是在尾状核中存储了类似如何打字、如何开车的行为方式和乏味习惯。之所以这些技巧不易失去要归功于尾状核的难忘记忆力特点。同样推及到爱上，难怪早期爱的激情能如此迅速地“凝结”成持久的爱的付出。竟然连大脑部最原始的一个部分都和爱打了交道就足以让这种感情非常强烈。而大脑的三个部分都参与其中让这种感觉强大的令人窒息。

2008-1-20 08:40 PM

练习翻译？遇到难题？快来翻吧

hly_2009 (abc_123)
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Love Gone Wrong
当爱情出了错

The problem with romance is that it doesn't always deliver the goods. For all the joy it promises, it can also play us for fools, particularly when it convinces us that we've found the right person, only to upend our expectations later. Birth-control pills that mask a woman's ability to detect her mate's incompatible MHC are one way bad love can slip past our perimeters. Adrenaline is another. Any overwhelming emotional experience that ratchets up your sensory system can distort your perceptions, persuading you to take a chance on someone you should avoid.

  浪漫爱情的麻烦在于它并非总是“履行诺言”。虽然爱带来了快乐；它还会愚弄我们，尤其在让我们认定自己是找到了”白马王子“/"梦中情人“，而后来却让我们的期望出现了倒转的时候。避孕药会蒙蔽女性识别出对方的MHC和自己并不匹配的能力，这时坏爱情会乘虚而入。另外就是肾上腺素。任何激动的、能把你的感官系统提升的感情经历都会扭曲你的感知、让你对应该去回避的人去冒险。

Psychologist Arthur Aron of the State University of New York at Stony Brook says people who meet during a crisis—an emergency landing of their airplane, say—may be much more inclined to believe they've found the person meant for them. "It's not that we fall in love with such people because they're immensely attractive," he says. "It's that they seem immensely attractive because we've fallen in love with them."

  Stony Brook 纽约大学心理学家Arthur Aron说，那些在危难中相遇的人们--例如：紧急飞机着陆--认为自己找到了爱情注定的人的倾向要大的多。他说：“并不是因为感到对方很有吸引力才让我们坠入爱河；而是因为我们已经爱上了他们所以才觉得他们很有吸引力”

If that sounds a lot like what happens when people meet and date under the regular influence of drugs or alcohol, only to sober up later and wonder what in the world they were thinking, that's because in both cases powerful chemistry is running the show. When hormones and natural opioids get activated, explains psychologist and sex researcher Jim Pfaus of Concordia University in Montreal, you start drawing connections to the person who was present when those good feelings were created. "You think someone made you feel good," Pfaus says, "but really it's your brain that made you feel good."

  如果这听上去和那些在酒精或毒品影响下人们结识或约会结果等醒来后却问自己当时怎么想的很想象，那么这是因为以上两个例子中，都是强力化学物质在支配人们。蒙特利尔Concordia大学的心理学家和性研究者Jim Pfaus解释道，当荷尔蒙和自然阿片类物质(opioid)被激发，产生了这些好感时，你就会和在场的人去拉近距离。”你以为是那个人让你感觉好，而其实是你的大脑让你感觉良好“

Of course, even a love fever that's healthily shared breaks eventually, if only because—like any fever—it's unsustainable over time. Fisher sees the dangers of maladaptive love in fMRI studies she's conducting of people who have been rejected by a lover and can't shake the pain. In these subjects, as with all people in love, there is activity in the caudate nucleus, but it's specifically in a part that's adjacent to a brain region associated with addiction. If the two areas indeed overlap, as Fisher suspects, that helps explain why telling a jilted lover that it's time to move on can be fruitless—as fruitless as admonishing a drunk to put a cork in the bottle.

  当然，就算是一段健康分享的爱情狂热最终也会停止--说不定是因为和任何发烧一样，长期下来都不能维持。 Fisher在用功能性磁共振成像对那些遭到情人的拒绝而无法摆脱痛苦的人们的研究中发现了适应不良爱情中的危险。和所有处于爱情中的人一样，这些人的尾状核中有活动，但是这个活动却出现在是临近和瘾有关的大脑区域的尾状核部分。Fisher也在怀疑，如果这两个部分重叠（译注：上文提到存储习惯的尾状核部分和与成瘾有关的部分)，那么是否就能来解释为何要告诉被抛弃的人去继续生活可能毫无成果的原因了--正如告诫要醉鬼盖上酒瓶塞一样不会有作用。

Happily, romance needn't come to ruin. Even irrational animals like ourselves would have quit trying if the bet didn't pay off sometimes. The eventual goal of any couple is to pass beyond serial dating—beyond even the thrill of early love—and into what's known as companionate love. That's the coffee-and-Sunday-paper phase, the board-games-when-it's-raining phase, and the fact is, there's not a lick of excitement about it. But that, for better or worse, is adaptive too. If partners are going to stay together for the years of care that children require, they need a love that bonds them to each other but without the passion that would be a distraction. As early humans relied more on their brainpower to survive—and the dependency period of babies lengthened to allow for the necessary learning—companionate bonding probably became more pronounced.

  令人高兴的是，浪漫爱情不必破灭。如果这个预测任何时候都不准确，那么即便像我们人类自己这样无理性地动物也会停止努力。任何一对夫妇的最终目标是经过连续约会--甚至是早期的爱情--而进入所谓的友爱爱情。这是周末报纸-喝咖啡的阶段；是下雨时一起下棋的阶段；事实上，友爱爱情中根本没有一点激情。但不论好坏，这也是适应下的结果。如果双方要在长期一起抚养孩子，那么就需要一种能联系彼此，不过没有那种会分心的激情的爱情。由于早期人类更多地是依靠脑力来生存--而婴儿依赖时期被延长以能获得必要学习---这种友爱联合关系大概就更加显著。

That's not to say that people can't stay in love or that those couples who say they still feel romantic after years of being together are imagining things. Aron has conducted fMRI studies of some of those stubbornly loving pairs, and initial results show that their brains indeed look very much like those of people newly in love, with all the right regions lighting up in all the right ways. "We wondered if they were really feeling these things," Aron says. "But it looks like this is really happening."

  这不是说人们无法保持爱情，也不是说那些在一起生活很长时间仍感到自己有浪漫爱情的夫妇梦是在幻想。 Aron对其中这些矢志不渝相爱的夫妇进行了功能性磁共振成像研究，最初的结果发现这些人的大脑的确和新近相爱的人们看上去非常相似---在同样的地方出现同样的亮区。 Aron说：”我们曾怀疑他们是否的确有初爱的感觉，不过，看起来，那的确是那样‘

These people, however, are the exceptions, and nearly all relationships must settle and cool. That's a hard truth, but it's a comforting one too. Long for the heat of early love if you want, but you'd have to pay for it with the solidity you've built over the years. "You've got to make a transition to a stabler state," says Barry McCarthy, a psychologist and sex therapist based in Washington. If love can be mundane, that's because sometimes it's meant to be.

  不过，这些人们是特例，几乎所有关系都会平静、冷却下来，但这也是令人欣慰的。你可以随意去渴望初期爱情，但是，这样用已经建立起来的长期坚固关系做为代价。。。。华盛顿心理学家、性治疗学家Barry McCarthy说：“你必须一定要过渡到一个更稳定的状态。如果爱乏味了，这是因为有时，它注定会变得乏味”

Calling something like love mundane, of course, is true only as far as it goes. Survival of a species is a ruthless and reductionist matter, but if staying alive were truly all it was about, might we not have arrived at ways to do it without joy—as we could have developed language without literature, rhythm without song, movement without dance? Romance may be nothing more than reproductive filigree, a bit of decoration that makes us want to perpetuate the species and ensures that we do it right. But nothing could convince a person in love that there isn't something more at work—and the fact is, none of us would want to be convinced. That's a nut science may never fully crack.

  当然爱称为乏味，只能是适可而止。虽然种族的生存是无情和简化论者的事，但是，如果人只求是活着的话，那么用那些没有快乐的方式不也能做得到吗--要真是如此，我们会建立出没有文学的语言，没有歌曲的旋律；没有舞蹈的动作。浪漫爱情也许只不过是繁衍的修饰物，让我们想让自己不朽、确保。。的一点点装饰。但要使一位处于爱情中的人去相信爱有没什么神秘可言，是无论用什么也办不到的，而且，事实上，谁也不会希望去相信。这就是一个科学永远也不能彻底消除的“老顽固”。

[ Last edited by hly_2009 at 2008-1-20 08:56 PM ]

2008-1-20 08:41 PM

练习翻译？遇到难题？快来翻吧

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