专题限时检测(二十) 阅读理解C篇专练(一)
(共3篇，限时24分钟)
A
(2018·南京、盐城一模)A so-called “smart drug” intended to improve cognitive (认知的) performance also seems to protect the brain from altitude sickness.
Ever more people are visiting high-altitude sites for work, sport, religious pilgrimages and military tasks. But even the fittest among us suffer in thin air: the lower oxygen content at altitude can lead to cognitive effects, including memory loss and attention difficulties.
There's little you can do to prevent these symptoms other than acclimatize — but this takes time and doesn't always work. A drug called oxiracetam might be the answer.
ShengLi Hu at the Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China, and her colleagues studied the performance of male military personnel at altitude. All lived in towns around 1,800 meters above sea level. During the study, they spent eight days at this altitude and then climbed for three days to reach 4,000 meters, where they stayed for up to a month.
Twenty participants took oxiracetam three times a day for the first 15 days of the study, while another 20 received no intervention. The men did tests of attention and memory at the start and end of the study and 20 days in, by which time they had been at 4,000 meters for nine days.
While all the participants experienced a drop in cognitive ability at 4,000 meters, those who took oxiracetam showed a much smaller decline than the control group.
Blood flow measurements indicated that at high altitude, parts of the brain's cerebral circulatory system contracted and dilated (扩张) in a way that promoted blood flow to the brain stem. This isn't surprising, since the brain stem plays a critical role in the maintenance of basic vital signs.
The team also found that the brain stem received blood at the expense of areas responsible for more advanced cognitive functions. But in people who took oxiracetam, more arteries dilated, so blood flow throughout the brain rose. This may be how the drug seems to lessen cognitive problems linked with low oxygen.
It isn't yet known whether diverting blood in this way could have negative effects in the long run.
“The results are striking and imply that oxiracetam may be beneficial for helping to relieve cognitive deficits caused by altitude，” says Timothy Hales at the University of Dundee, UK.
Oxiracetam is not licensed for medical use globally, but it is known to be a mild
stimulant, says Hales，“Coca leaves have been used by native Andeans for centuries to overcome altitude sickness and this is attributed to their modest cocaine content. So perhaps it is not surprising that benefit can be derived from another, though mild, stimulant.”
语篇解读：本文是一篇说明文，主要介绍了一种能够对抗由高原反应所引起的认知能力衰退的药。
1．The underlined word “acclimatize” in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to “________”.
A．adapt C．exist
B．interact D．object
解析：选A 词义猜测题。画线词所在句意为“对于登高所表现出来的不适，我们没有别的办法只能适应”，故选adapt。
2．What does the experiment done in China reveal?
A．The higher altitude you are at, the slower your brain will be. B．At 4,000 meters, the two subject groups show no difference. C．Memory tests are beneficial to relieving attention difficulties. D．“Smart drug” largely counters negative effects of altitude sickness.
解析：选D 推理判断题。根据文章倒数第二段“oxiracetam may be beneficial for helping to relieve cognitive deficits caused by altitude”可知，这种药对于缓解海拔高所产生的认知能力的衰退是有益的。所以这种药能够极大地对抗高原反应疾病所引起的副作用。
3．According to the passage, the root cause of the cognitive effects lies in ________. A．physical tiredness C．cognitive training
B．low oxygen content D．extreme high altitude
解析：选B 细节理解题。根据第二段的第二句“the lower oxygen content at altitude can lead to cognitive effects”可知，最关键的因素是高海拔处会导致大脑供氧不足，从而导致认知能力下降。所以供氧不足是大脑内部认知能力下降的根本原因。
4．What is the best title for the passage? A．Fight high anxiety
B．Oxiracetam — a magic drug C．Keep sharp at altitude D．Problems on high-altitude sites
解析：选C 标题归纳题。文章的第一段的意思是“一种旨在改善人的认知能力的药能
够保护大脑不受高原疾病的影响”，这就是文章的主题句。由此可见“在海拔高的地方保持反应敏捷”，作为文章的标题比较适合。
B
(2018·通、泰、淮、连、扬、徐、宿三模)Symbolic communication in the form of language underlies our unique ability to reason — or the conventional wisdom holds so. A new study published in Science, though, suggests our capacity to reason logically may not actually depend on language, at least not fully. The findings show babies still too young to speak can reason and make reasonable deductions.
The authors — a team from several European institutions — studied infants (婴儿) aged 12 and 19 months, when language learning and speech production has just begun but before complex mastery has been achieved. The children had to inspect distinct objects repeatedly — such as a dinosaur and a flower. The items were initially hidden behind a black wall. In one set of experiments the animation (动漫) would show a cup scooping up (舀出) the dinosaur. Half of the time, the barrier would then be removed to reveal, as expected, the remaining flower. In the rest of the instances, though, the wall would disappear and a second dinosaur would be there.
The children deduced in these latter occurrences that something was not quite right, even though they were unable to express in words what was wrong. Eye-tracking — a commonly used technique to judge mental abilities in preverbal (语前的) children and apes — showed infants stared significantly longer at scenes where the unexpected object appeared behind the barrier, suggesting they were confused by the reveal.“Our results indicate that the acquisition of logical vocabulary might not be the source of the most fundamental logical building blocks in the mind，”says lead study author Nicoló Cesana-Arlotti. A major component of human logic, he notes, relates to thinking about alternative possibilities and eliminating inconsistent ones: Does the dinosaur sit behind the barrier or does the flower? In a formal logic this is called a disjunctive syllogism (析取三段论): A or B; not if A, therefore B.
Cesana-Arlotti acknowledges his findings do not deny the importance of language and symbolic communication to human brain development, and to our evolutionary backstory. Yet the new research suggests that perhaps it is not entirely necessary to shape the brain's logical reasoning capacities. He plans further work studying how logic before the development of language might still differ from reasoning abilities that appear once language comes along, as language may open additional reasoning abilities unavailable to the speechless brain.
“To our knowledge, nobody has ever directly documented logical reasoning in 12-month-old infants before，”he adds.
高考英语江苏专二轮复习专题限时检测(二十) 阅读理解C篇专练(一) Word含解析
