雅思阅读 058 · Music Helps Soothe the Brain When We Are Stressed

改编自 Scientific American（Payal Dhar, 2026）。题型：T/F/NG + 填空。难度：中等（Passage 1，约 600 词）。

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🎧 课文朗读音频（约 1 分钟）

正文 Passage

We all know the power of music to make us feel better when we are stressed. But this relaxing effect goes much deeper than our mood: music changes our brains, reorienting our neural pathways and altering our physiology along the way.

This power, it seems, is particular to music versus other soothing sounds, such as nature sounds, according to a new study.

Music calms our heart rate, lowers our skin conductivity and gets our levels of cortisol — the stress hormone — in check.

"After a stressful experience, the brain can remain in a state of high alert," says Yi Du, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and senior author of the new study.

"Nature sounds may provide a calming background, but music also takes the brain on an organised journey — tension builds, expectations develop, and the tension is eventually resolved."

To tease out music's singular neural effects, Du and her colleagues conducted a series of experiments.

First, the researchers asked a group of 30 participants to listen to music and another 30 to listen to water sounds in nature before and after these participants performed a task designed to stress them out: mental math exercises done within time limits and accompanied by feedback.

The researchers measured the participants' stress responses, including their heart rate and salivary cortisol levels, before and after the test.

Those who listened to music recovered from stress faster.

In a second experiment involving a different group of participants who underwent brain scanning using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, the researchers found that listening to music, not natural sounds, strengthened specific neuronal pathways.

"Music altered communication between brain regions that process sound and regions involved in regulating stress and arousal," Du says.

"Put simply, music does more than mask stress or distract us from it — it gives the brain a structured path back toward a calmer state."

Du says more work is needed to fully understand how music soothes a stressed brain.

"We studied healthy young adults experiencing short-term stress, which may not apply directly to clinical populations or to chronic stress in everyday life," she says.

"We also used music selected by the researchers, whereas personally preferred music might produce different effects."

Still, the study helps to explain previous research that has examined the connection between music and physiological and psychological stress responses.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

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题目 Questions

Questions 1-5: T/F/NG

1. Music has the same effect as nature sounds.

2. Music lowers cortisol levels.

3. The first experiment involved 60 participants total.

4. Those who listened to nature sounds recovered from stress faster.

5. The second experiment used fMRI brain scanning.

Questions 6-10: Complete the notes. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.

• Yi Du is a researcher at the Chinese Academy of (6) ____________.
• The stress task involved mental math exercises done within (7) ____________.
• Researchers measured heart rate and (8) ____________ cortisol levels.
• Music altered communication between brain regions that process sound and regions involved in regulating (9) ____________ and arousal.
• The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of (10) ____________.

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答案 Answers

题号	答案
1	FALSE (particular to music)
2	TRUE
3	TRUE (30+30)
4	FALSE (music group recovered faster)
5	TRUE
6	Sciences
7	time limits
8	salivary
9	stress
10	Sciences USA

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核心词汇

music / stress / brain / cortisol / neural pathways / fMRI / Chinese Academy of Sciences / PNAS / relaxation / neuroscience