北京2019中考英语优质大题训练.pdf

英语 阅读理解 Passage 1 Youre walking down a quiet street and suddenly you hear some footsteps. Undoubtedly, it means that theres someone around. But have you ever wondered why it happens to us that its someone elses footsteps, not ours? According to a new study published in eptember, this situation results from a role in our brain to leave out the noises we make ourselves. In order to study how our brain does this, a group of scientists from America carried out an experiment with mice at Duke University. In the experiment, researchers controlled the sounds a group of mice could hear, reported cience Daily. During the first several days, the mice would hear the same sound each time they took a step. This was just like running on a tiny piano with each key playing exactly the same note^^. cientists found that their auditory cortex （听觉皮层）一 the area of the brain that processes sound 一 became active at first but decreased its reply to the sound after two or three minutes when the mice became familiar with it. Its almost like they were wearing special headphones that could filter （过滤）out the sound of their own movements,David chneider, a professor at Duke University. But once the sound changed, their auditory cortex became active again. This suggests that the filter in a mouses brain could help it find new sounds or strange noise in the environment easily after turning off familiar sounds, according to Science Daily. For mice, this is really important,said chneider. u Mice really need to be able to listen for a cat getting close to them, even when theyre walking and making noise.,, As important as it is for mice to live more safely, the ability to leave out movement-related noises is also useful for humans when it comes to complex （复杂 的）tasks. The ability to leave out the expected consequences（结果影 响）of our movement gives us the