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Exercise seems to be good for the human brain, with many recent studies suggesting that regular exercise improves memory and thinking skills. But an interesting new study asks whether the apparent cognitive benefits from exercise are real or just a placebo effect — that is, if we think we will be “smarter” after exercise, do our brains respond accordingly? The answer has significant implications for any of us hoping to use exercise to keep our minds sharp throughout our lives.
While many studies suggest that exercise may have cognitive benefits, recently some scientists have begun to question whether the apparently beneficial effects of exercise on thinking might be a placebo effect. So researchers at Florida State University in Tallahassee and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided to focus on expectations, on what people anticipate that exercise will do for thinking. If people’s expectations jibe (吻合) closely with the actual benefits, then at least some of those improvements are probably a result of the placebo effect and not of exercise.
For the new study, which was published last month in PLOS One, the researchers recruited 171 people through an online survey system, they asked half of these volunteers to estimate by how much a stretching and toning regimens (拉伸運(yùn)動(dòng)) performed three times a week might improve various measures of thinking. The other volunteers were asked the same questions, but about a regular walking program.
In actual experiments, stretching and toning program generally have little if any impact on people’s cognitive skills. Walking, on the other hand, seems to substantially improve thinking ability.
But the survey respondents believed the opposite, estimating that the stretching and toning program would be more beneficial for the mind than walking. The estimates of benefits from walking were lower.
These data, while they do not involve any actual exercise, are good news for people who do exercise. “The results from our study suggest that the benefits of aerobic exercise are not a placebo effect,” said Cary Stothart, a graduate student in cognitive psychology at Florida State University, who led the study.
If expectations had been driving the improvements in cognition seen in studies after exercise, Mr. Stothart said, then people should have expected walking to be more beneficial for thinking than stretching. They didn’t, implying that the changes in the brain and thinking after exercise are physiologically genuine.
The findings are strong enough to suggest that exercise really does change the brain and may, in the process, improve thinking, Mr. Stothart said. That conclusion should encourage scientists to look even more closely into how, at a molecular level, exercise remodels the human brain, he said. It also should encourage the rest of us to move, since the benefits are, it seems, not imaginary, even if they are in our head.
62. Which of the following about the placebo effect is TRUE according to the passage? 
A. It occurs during exercise.      B. It has cognitive benefits. 
C. It is just a mental reaction.     D. It is a physiological response. 
63. Why did the researchers at the two universities conduct the research? 
A. To discover the placebo effect in the exercise. 
B. To prove the previous studies have a big drawback. 
C. To test whether exercise can really improve cognition. 
D. To encourage more scientists to get involved in the research. 
64. What can we know about the research Cary Stothart and his team carried out? 
A. They employed 171 people to take part in the actual exercise. 
B. The result of the research removed the recent doubt of some scientists. 
C. The participants thought walking had a greater impact on thinking ability. 
D. Their conclusion drives scientists to do research on the placebo effect. 
65. What might be the best title for the passage?
A. Is it necessary for us to take exercise?   B. How should people exercise properly? 
C. What makes us smarter during exercise?   D. Does exercise really make us smarter? 
D
Mum, it’s me. Hopefully, this Mothering Sunday you will get to hear those three words. I will, of course, try to phone you. I hope we will be able to speak for the allowed 10 minutes. But I suspect many inmates will be using the phone, so if I don’t call and if we don’t speak, then this is what I would have said:
It’s not your fault that I am here. I know that deep in your heart you have questioned whether my current circumstance is somehow your fault, if the reckless stupidity of my past is somehow a failure on your part. It is not. Only one person is to blame, only one person should hurt — me. You have always taught me that when the room goes dark, you can wait for the lights to be switched back on or you can search in the dark and turn the light on yourself. You are my light. You always have been and always will be. There is nobody I admire more, nobody I have strived harder to please in my life, which is why my current failure hurts me so much.
I am so sorry that I will not be there to see you, but I want you to know that now, as always, you are here with me. In my darkest hours, and in the coldest loneliness of my past few months, my mind has so often wandered to the past, to when it was you and me — and I have been able to smile. Yours is the strength that I draw upon.
A parent’s job is to make sure that they pass on the best of themselves to their children. You have done that. It is the inner you in me that will get me through this.
I have failed you so epically, but you have never failed me. If I think back to the tears I shed when Dad left, all those years ago, I see you through their misty glaze. You holding me and you telling me we’d be OK, and we will be. We are and always will be the best team.
Childhood heroes such as footballers, actors and rock stars are clichéd. If the job’s done right, a child’s heroes should be their parents — you are mine. The strength you showed after the divorce from Dad to find your biological parents, to go to university and get your teaching qualifications, to begin your life again, is the strength that I draw on now. It is the belief in myself, it is the belief you have in me, that tells me that once I am released I can and will rebuild my life. I will make you proud again. I will make you happy to have me as your son. Yours is the will that gets me through every day.
I don’t believe you can judge a person for the mistakes they make, as we all make them, but you can judge them for what they do afterwards. And after this, when it is all over, you will still have a son with the same hopes and dreams. They have not diminished. If you can dream it, then you have to believe it can happen — right?
So this Mothering Sunday, please think back to that morning in the 80s, the first Mother’s Day without Dad, when a six-year-old me got up early and made breakfast for you. Do you remember it? Could you ever forget? A slice of bread a doorstep thick and a wedge of cheese equally dense. You didn’t have to eat it, but you did, chewing every dry mouthful. I know now why you forced yourself — because it had been made with love. Well, things don’t change this year — this letter is that bread and cheese (it sure has plenty of the cheese!).
I love you so much. I am sorry I have let you down, but you have taught me that we will always pick ourselves up and become better than we were before. Thank you for everything and this year, more than ever:
Happy Mothering Sunday.
Love, your son
66. According to the passage, what made the author most upset at present? 
A. Losing his freedom temporarily.
B. Being unable to phone his mother.
C. Failing to live up to his mother’s expectations.
D. Having no chance to spend the weekend with mother.
67. What does the underlined word “this” in Paragraph 4 refer to? 
 A. Mothering Sunday. B. Dark time.   C. His mistake.  D. Near future.
68. What did the author do in the loneliness of his past months？
A. He summed up the causes of the failure in his life. 
B. He planned to help his mother find her birth parents. 
C. He recalled the fond memories of being with his mother. 
D. He prepared himself to go to university for further studies. 
69. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word “clichéd” in Paragraph 6? 
A. Ridiculous.   B. Liberal.   C. Explicit.    D. Common.
70. Which of the following can best describe the author’s mother?
A. Selfless but stubborn.      B. Guilty but determined.
C. Selfish but responsible.     D. Caring but envious.
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