Sometimes people complain when trying to learn a new skill: “___1___.” But adult brains may be more pliable than we thought. Research has shown that adult brains can increase in gray matter over weeks or months. Now comes a study finding that it’s possible to increase the brain’s gray matter quite quickly—in only a matter of days. That’s according to research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Veronica Kwok et al., "Learning new color names produces rapid increase in gray matter in the intact adult human cortex"]

The scientists created an experiment that ___2___ how young children learn new words. They took four similar shades of green and blue and gave them ___3___—meaningless Mandarin monosyllables like sòng. Nineteen adults learned to match those names and shades in five sessions over three days, a total of an hour and 48 minutes.

The scientists took MRI images of the subjects’ brains before and after the experiment. And they found a ___4___ in gray matter volume in the regions known to be related to color vision and perception. The researchers contend that the adult brain is thus more changeable more quickly than anyone thought. And that ___5___.
【視聽版科學(xué)小組榮譽(yù)出品】
I’m not that young anymore. It’s harder to learn anything new. mimicked made-up names noticeable increase an old dog can learn a new trick
面對(duì)一項(xiàng)新技術(shù)，人們常會(huì)感嘆：“老了，學(xué)不動(dòng)了。”但其實(shí)，成年人的大腦沒我們想象得那么遲鈍。科學(xué)家已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)成年人大腦灰質(zhì)增加的周期在幾周到幾個(gè)月不等。新的一項(xiàng)研究表明，這一周期甚至可以縮短至幾天。這項(xiàng)成果刊登在《美國(guó)國(guó)家科學(xué)院院刊》上。 科學(xué)家們?cè)O(shè)計(jì)了一項(xiàng)模擬兒童學(xué)習(xí)新單詞的實(shí)驗(yàn)，他們用單音節(jié)漢字（如song，四聲）對(duì)4種相似的藍(lán)綠色塊進(jìn)行命名，然后讓19位成年人受試者進(jìn)行匹配。受試者在三天內(nèi)分五次完成了匹配任務(wù)，共耗時(shí)1小時(shí)48分鐘。 科學(xué)家們經(jīng)過對(duì)受試者實(shí)驗(yàn)前后核磁共振成像對(duì)比發(fā)現(xiàn)，實(shí)驗(yàn)后他們大腦的色覺、知覺區(qū)域內(nèi)的灰質(zhì)明顯增加了?？茖W(xué)家們因此認(rèn)為實(shí)際上成人的大腦運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)速度相當(dāng)快。這也就是說老狗也是能學(xué)新把戲滴~