上期答案
Her sport is misunderstood. Some just think the rifle is doing the work, or that it’s a matter of simply standing still and firing.
她所从事的运动被误解了。有些人只是认为步枪在工作，或者只是简单地站着不动然后射击。
本期内容
早上好，读者朋友们，今天分享的文章节选自《史密森尼杂志》。在这个快节奏、高压力的时代，你是否常发现自己正沉浸在某个任务或对话中，突然间，思绪却像脱缰的野马，飘向了远方？那一刻，时间仿佛凝固，而你的心灵却已游历千山万水。这种神秘而普遍的现象——走神，究竟是何方神圣？它为何能在不经意间占据我们的思绪，又隐藏着怎样的科学奥秘与心理密码？
Why Do Our Minds Wander?
我们为何会走神？
1
When psychologist Jonathan Smallwood set out to study mind-wandering about 25 years ago, few of his peers thought that was a very good idea. How could one hope to investigate these spontaneous and unpredictable thoughts that crop up when people stop paying attention to their surroundings and the task at hand? Thoughts that couldn’t be linked to any measurable outward behavior?But Smallwood, now at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, forged ahead.
spontaneous /spɑːnˈteɪniəs/ adj. 自发的
crop up 出现，发生
set out to 开始工作
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大约25年前，当心理学家乔纳森·斯莫尔伍德(Jonathan Smallwood)开始研究走神时，他的同行中几乎没有人认为这是个好主意。当人们不再关注周围的环境和手头的任务时，人们怎么能希望调查这些自发的、不可预测的想法呢?那些无法与任何可衡量的外在行为联系起来的想法?但斯莫尔伍德现在在加拿大安大略省皇后大学工作，他率先进行了研究。
Smallwood learned that unhappy minds tend to wander in the past, while happy minds often ponder the future. He also became convinced that wandering among our memories is crucial to help prepare us for what is yet to come. Though some kinds of mind-wandering — such as dwelling on problems that can’t be fixed — may be associated with depression, Smallwood now believes mind-wandering is rarely a waste of time. It is merely our brain trying to get a bit of work done when it is under the impression that there isn’t much else going on.
wander /ˈwɑːndər/ v.闲逛，漫游
ponder /ˈpɑːndər/ v.沉思；考虑
dwell on 老是想着；唠叨
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斯莫尔伍德了解到，不快乐的人往往徘徊在过去，而快乐的人往往思考未来。他也开始相信，在我们的记忆中徘徊对于帮助我们为即将到来的事情做好准备是至关重要的。虽然有些走神——比如纠结于无法解决的问题——可能与抑郁症有关，但斯莫尔伍德现在认为走神很少是浪费时间。这只不过是我们的大脑在没有太多其他事情发生的情况下，试图完成一点工作。
I think it’s a similar process used in a different context. When you’re on holiday, and you’ve got lots of free time, you might say you’re daydreaming about what you’d like to do next. But when you’re under pressure to perform, you’d experience the same thoughts as mind-wandering. I think it is more helpful to talk about the underlying processes: spontaneous thought, or the decoupling of attention from perception, which is what happens when our thoughts separate from our perception of the environment. Both these processes take place during mind-wandering and daydreaming.
daydream v. 做白日梦
perception /pərˈsepʃ(ə)n/ n. 看法，认识
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我认为这是一个类似的过程，在不同的背景下使用。当你在度假的时候，你有很多空闲时间，你可能会说你在做白日梦，想着你下一步想做什么。但当你面临表现压力时，你就会经历与走神一样的想法。我认为谈论潜在的过程更有帮助:自发的思维，或者注意力与感知的脱钩，当我们的思想与我们对环境的感知分离时，就会发生这种情况。这两个过程都发生在走神和做白日梦的时候。
More recently, we have identified much simpler tasks that also activate the default mode network. If you let people watch a series of shapes like triangles or squares on a screen, and every so often you surprise them and ask something — like, “In the last trial, which side was the triangle on?”— regions within the default mode network increase activity when they’re making that decision. That’s a challenging observation if you think the default mode network is just a mind-wandering system.But what both situations have in common is the person is using information from memory. I now think the default mode network is necessary for any thinking based on information from memory — and that includes mind-wandering.
triangle /ˈtraɪæŋɡ(ə)l/ n. 三角形
square /skwer/ n.正方形
mind-wandering 心不在焉的
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最近，我们发现了更简单的任务也能激活默认模式网络。如果你让人们在屏幕上观看一系列形状，比如三角形或正方形，并时不时地给他们一个惊喜，问他们一些问题，比如，“在最后一次试验中，三角形在哪一边?”-默认模式网络中的区域在做出决定时活动增加。如果你认为默认模式网络只是一个走神系统，那么这是一个具有挑战性的观察结果。但这两种情况的共同点是，人们都在使用记忆中的信息。我现在认为默认模式网络对于任何基于记忆信息的思考都是必要的——包括走神。
The past and future seem to really dominate people’s thinking. I think things like mind-wandering are attempts by the brain to make sense of what has happened, so that we can behave better in the future.By that, I don’t mean that other animals can’t imagine the future, but that our world is built upon our ability to do so, and to learn from the past to build a better future. I think animals that focused only on the present were outcompeted by others that remembered things from the past and could focus on future goals, for millions of years — until you got humans, a species that’s obsessed with taking things that happened and using them to gain added value for future behavior.
outcompete v.超过；胜出
make sense of 弄清楚；领会
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过去和未来似乎真的主宰了人们的思维。我认为像走神这样的事情是大脑试图理解所发生的事情，这样我们就可以在未来表现得更好。我并不是说其他动物不能想象未来，而是说我们的世界是建立在我们有能力想象未来的基础上的，我们有能力从过去中学习，创造更美好的未来。我认为那些只关注现在的动物被那些记住过去的事情并能关注未来目标的动物打败了，这种情况持续了数百万年，直到有了人类，一个痴迷于接受发生过的事情并利用它们为未来的行为获得附加价值的物种。
END
写作句式积累
That’s a defining difference.
这是一个决定性的区别。
长难句解析
I think animals /that focused only on the present/ were outcompeted by others /that remembered things from the past and could focus on future goals, for millions of years — until you got humans, a species that’s obsessed with taking things that happened and using them to gain added value for future behavior.
主句的主干：I（主语）+ think（谓语）+ animals that focused only on the present were outcompeted by others（宾语从句）。that focused only on the present是定语从句，修饰先行词animals，that remembered things from the past and could focus on future goals是定语从句，修饰先行词others。a species that’s obsessed with taking things that happened and using them to gain added value for future behavior是同位语从句，修饰限定先行词humans，其中that’s obsessed with...是定语从句，修饰限定a species。
翻译：我认为，数百万年来，那些只关注现在的动物被那些能记住过去并专注于未来目标的动物所超越——直到人类的出现，人类这一物种痴迷于吸取过去发生的事情，并利用它们为未来行为增加价值。
翻译练习
Social groups are so important to us as a species that we spend most of our time trying to anticipate what others are going to do, and I think social media is filling part of the gap that mind-wandering is trying to fill.
翻译练习，欢迎大家文末留言打卡，下期推送文章公布答案哟，一起阅外刊学英语吧！
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