八月英文原版书阅读计划  图/Eric

Part 1:Words and Sentences

身体不同肌肉群的英文表达

It is easy to track the results as you challenge your biceps, triceps, quadriceps, pecs, delts, lats, traps, abs, glutes, calves, and hamstrings.

依次是：二头肌，三头肌，四头肌，胸肌，三角肌，背肌，斜方肌，腹肌，臀肌，腓肌，腿后腱肌

 Major Muscle Groups Common Names for Those Muscle

convoluted

Each run earns a numerical score based on its accuracy, and as the prospective driver accumulates points, the tests get harder and harder, with the endpoints becoming more obscure and the routes longer, more complicated, and more convoluted.

之前一直有一个疑问：and 前后连接的单词或句子在逻辑上构成并列关系，那么在这个实例中是否会存在用词重复和累赘的问题呢？

我的理解是：obscure, complicated, convoluted 困难程度依次递进，相对而言convoluted算是一个不常用的词汇了。在字典中对其的解释是：very complicated and difficult to understand.

E.g.: a convoluted explanation that left the listeners even more confused than they were before.

Part 2:My Thoughts

作者通过对伦敦出租车司机和对有视觉障碍的人的研究，向我们阐明了：

1.合格的伦敦出租车司机能力的提高与大脑中的海马体大小可能有关；

2.人们对大脑的认识存在误区：大脑的机能并不是一层不变的；

3.通过刻意的，有目标的训练，可以提高大脑对事物的处理分析能力。

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从有目的的训练中，提高现有水平。针对特定需求，不断刻意练习，提高大脑对其的处理能力和效率。我觉得这个适应性有一点进化论的味道在里面：用进废退。在大脑加强一方面的神经突触上的联系的时候，它是否能够在其他方面也像原来一样构建神经元之间的联系。在提高一特定方面的时候，是否会对其他的能力有所削弱呢？这个是书中提到的研究所没有涉及的部分。个人思考，欢迎交流。

Part 3:Summary

There is a growing body of evidence that both the structure and the function of the brain change in response to various sorts of mental training, in much the same way as your muscles and cardiovascular system respond to physical training.

Indeed, even after passing all the tests and getting licensed, London taxi drivers continue to increase and hone their knowledge of London’s streets.

More to the point, the size of the hippocampus is quite flexible in at least some species of birds and can grow by as much as 30 percent in response to a bird’s food-storing experiences.

The years spent mastering the Knowledge had enlarged precisely that part of the brain that is responsible for navigating from one place to another.

The posterior hippocampi of the taxi drivers are equally “bulked up,” but with brain tissue, not muscle fiber.

This idea went hand in hand with the belief that individual differences in abilities were due mainly to genetically determined differences in the brain’s wiring and that learning was just a way of fulfilling one’s genetic potential.

This steady use of the three fingers had caused the areas of the brain devoted to each of those fingers to grow so much that those areas eventually overlapped.

The brain’s structure and function are not fixed.

It is possible to shape the brain—your brain, my brain, anybody’s brain—in the ways that we desire through conscious, deliberate training.

Their training exercises taught the subjects’ brains to do a better job of processing, which in turn allowed the subjects to discern smaller details without any improvement in the signal from the eyes.