演讲MP3+双语文稿:如何克服走神，变得更专注?

听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿，供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:如何克服走神，变得更专注?，希望你会喜欢！

【演讲人】Amishi Jha

【演讲主题】《如何驯服神游的大脑》

【演讲文稿-中英文】

翻译者Kyle Lu 校对Ziyi Zhang

 

 

00:15

Consider the following statement:human beings only use 10 percent of their brain capacity.Well, as a neuroscientist, I can tell youthat while Morgan Freeman delivered this linewith the gravitas that makes him a great actor,this statement is entirely false.

你一定听过这样的描述：人类只使用了大脑10%的潜力。作为一个神经系统学家， 我可以告诉你虽然这句掷地有声的话语 让摩根弗里曼成为一个伟大的演员，但是其实这句话是完全错误的。

 

 

00:31

(Laughter)

（笑声）

 

 

00:32

The truth is, human beings use 100 percent of their brain capacity.The brain is a highly efficient, energy-demanding organthat gets fully utilizedand even though it is at full capacity being used,it suffers from a problem of information overload.There's far too much in the environment than it can fully process.So to solve this problem of overload,evolution devised a solution,which is the brain's attention system.

真相是，人类其实已经使用了 大脑100%的潜力。人的大脑是是一个已经完全开发的 极其高效而且耗能的器官。而且，即使大脑的潜力 已经被完全开发，还依然面临着信息过载的问题。我们周围的环境实在是太丰富了， 大脑无法处理所有的信息。因此，为了解决信息过载的问题，大脑在人类进化过程中 产生了注意力系统。

 

 

01:02

Attention allows usto notice, select and direct the brain's computational resourcesto a subset of all that's available.We can think of attention as the leader of the brain.Wherever attention goes, the rest of the brain follows.In some sense, it's your brain's boss.And over the last 15 years,I've been studying the human brain's attention system.In all of our studies, I've been very interested in one question.If it is indeed the case that our attention is the brain's boss,is it a good boss?Does it actually guide us well?And to dig in on this big question, I wanted to know three things.First, how does attention control our perception?Second, why does it fail us,often leaving us feeling foggy and distracted?And third, can we do anything about this fogginess,can we train our brain to pay better attention?To have more strong and stable attention in the work that we do in our lives.

大脑的注意力系统让我们可以感知、选择并引导大脑的 信息处理能力，使我们专注于所有信息中 特定的一部分。我们可以把注意力想像成 大脑的指挥官，我们的注意力去往哪里， 大脑的其他部分就跟到哪里。某种程度上，它就是你大脑的老板。在过去的15年中，我一直在研究人类的注意力系统。在我的研究之中， 我对这样一个问题非常的感兴趣。如果说注意力系统是我们大脑的老板，那么，它是一个好老板吗？它指挥的好不好？为了深入研究这个问题， 我需要知道三件事。第一，我们的注意力 如何控制我们的认知能力？第二，为什么注意力会出问题，比如我们的大脑有时会变得不清醒 或者走神？第三，当我们的大脑不够清醒的时候 我们如何应对，我们能不能通过训练 让我们的大脑能够有更好的注意力？这样的话我们就能在工作生活中 拥有有更专注、持久的注意力。

 

 

02:04

So I wanted to give you a brief glimpseinto how we're going to look at this.A very poignant exampleof how our attention ends up getting utilized.And I want to do it using the example of somebody that I know quite well.He ends up being part of a very large group of people that we work with,for whom attention is a matter of life and death.Think of medical professionalsor firefightersor soldiers or marines.

那么让我来介绍一下我们如何研究这个问题。让我们通过一个例子来解释我们的的注意力是如何工作的。我想举一个我非常熟悉的人的例子。对于他所属的职业群体来说，注意力是一个关系着生死的问题，比如医生、消防员、士兵、海军陆战队。

 

 

02:34

This is the story of a marine captain, Captain Jeff Davis.And the scene that I'm going to share with you, as you can see,is not about his time in the battlefield.He was actually on a bridge, in Florida.But instead of looking at the scenery around him,seeing the beautiful vistasand noticing the cool ocean breezes,he was driving fast and contemplating driving off that bridge.And he would later tell me that it took all of everything he had not to do so.You see, he'd just returned from Iraq.And while his body was on that bridge,his mind, his attention, was thousands of miles away.He was gripped with suffering.His mind was worried and preoccupiedand had stressful memories and, really, dread for his future.And I'm really glad that he didn't take his life.Because he, as a leader, knew that he wasn't the only onethat was probably suffering;many of his fellow marines probably were, too.

我们的主人公Jeff Davis上尉 是一名海军陆战队员。正如你们所见，我要讲的故事并不是发生在战场上，而是在美国佛罗里达州的一座桥上。可是他既没有四处张望欣赏美丽的风景，也没有享受凉爽的海风，他飞速开车，想着要不要把车开下桥 结束自己的生命。后来他告诉我， 他差一点点就决定自杀了。当时，他刚刚从伊拉克回来，虽然他人在桥上可是他的思绪和 他的注意力却在千里之外。他当时非常的痛苦，他的思绪被忧虑占据着，他的记忆充满了压抑， 而且对未来充满了恐惧。我很庆幸 当时他没有结束自己的生命。因为他知道他不是唯一在痛苦中煎熬的人，有很多海军陆战队的队友 可能也在承受着痛苦的折磨。

 

 

03:32

And in the year 2008, he partnered with me in the first-of-its-kind projectthat actually allowed us to test and offer something called mindfulness trainingto active-duty military personnel.But before I tell you about what mindfulness training is,or the results of that study,I think it's important to understand how attention works in the brain.

2008年，他参加了我们首次的 专注力训练实验项目。在这个项目中，我们为在现役士兵 提供专注力方面的训练。在介绍什么是专注力训练 以及实验结果之前，我觉得有必要首先弄清楚注意力在大脑中是如何运作的。

 

 

03:55

So what we do in the laboratoryis that many of our studies of attention involve brain-wave recordings.In these brain wave recordings, people wear funny-looking capsthat are sort of like swimming caps, that have electrodes embedded in them.These electrodes pick up the ongoing brain electrical activity.And they do it with millisecond temporal precision.So we can see these small yet detectable voltage fluctuations over time.And doing this, we can very precisely plot the timing of the brain's activity.About 170 millisecondsafter we show our research participants a face on the screen,we see a very reliable, detectable brain signature.It happens right at the back of the scalp,above the regions of the brain that are involved in face processing.Now, this happens so reliably and so on cue,as the brain's face detector,that we've even given this brain-wave component a name.We call it the N170 component.And we use this component in many of our studies.It allows us to see the impact that attention may have on our perception.

在实验室里，很多实验都需要记录脑电波。实验对象需要带上 一个奇特的帽子，样子有点像游泳帽，不同的是 这个帽子里边内嵌了很多电极。这些电极会实时收集脑电波的活跃度，时间精度可以精确到毫秒级别。因此我们能够检测到 随时间变化的微小的电压波动。通过这种方式，我们可以精确的画出 脑电波活跃度随时间变化的图像。大约在我们向实验对象展示人脸图像 的170毫秒之后，我们可以观测到一个非常明显的 脑部活动特征反应。这个反应就发生在头皮的后边，位置大约在人脑中 人脸识别功能区域的上方。这个反应非常的稳定和准确，我们甚至给了这种脑电波的活动模式 一个名字叫做N170模式。我们在很多实验中 都利用这种脑电波模式，来检测注意力对人的认知的影响。

 

 

05:03

I'm going to give you a sense of the kind of experimentsthat we actually do in the lab.We would show participants images like this one.You should see a face and a scene overlaid on each other.And what we do is we ask our participantsas they're viewing a series of these types of overlaid images,to do something with their attention.On some trials, we'll ask them to pay attention to the face.And to make sure they're doing that,we ask them to tell us, by pressing a button,if the face appeared to be male or female.On other trials,we ask them to tell what the scene was -- was it indoor or outdoor?And in this way, we can manipulate attentionand confirm that the participants were actually doing what we said.Our hypotheses about attention were as follows:if attention is indeed doing its job and affecting perception,maybe it works like an amplifier.And what I mean by thisis that when we direct attention to the face,it becomes clearer and more salient,it's easier to see.But when we direct it to the scene, the face becomes barely perceptibleas we process the scene information.

让我给你们一个直观的印象，看看在实验室中 我们的实验是如何进行的在实验中， 我们会给实验对象展示这样的图片。你会看到一张人脸的图片和 一张风景图片互相重叠着。我们会让实验对象看这一系列重叠图片的同时去做一些别的事情。在一部分实验组里， 我们要求他们注意观察人脸。为了确保他们的确在认真地观察人脸，我们会让他们通过按按钮来回答我们这张人脸是男性还是女性。在另外一部分的实验组里，我们要求他们回答 当前的风景照片是室内还是室外。通过这种方式， 我们可以操控他们的注意力，并确保实验对象的确 在按照我们的要求去做。我们的假设是：如果注意力确实会影响人的认知，它起到的也许是促进作用。也就是说，当我们引导他们的注意力 去关注人脸的时候，人脸的图片就会变得更清楚、 更明显，也更容易察觉。但是，当我们引导他们的注意力 去关注风景的时候，人脸的图片就会变的更不容易察觉，因为大脑就会倾向于处理风景信息，。

 

 

06:11

So what we wanted to dois look at this brain-wave component of face detection, the N170,and see if it changed at allas a function of where our participants were paying attention --to the scene or the face.And here's what we found.We found that when they paid attention to the face,the N170 was larger.And when they paid attention to the scene, as you can see in red, it was smaller.And that gap you see between the blue and red linesis pretty powerful.What it tells us is that attention,which is really the only thing that changed,since the images they viewed were identical in both cases --attention changes perception.And it does so very fast.Within 170 milliseconds of actually seeing a face.In our follow-up studies, we wanted to see what would happen,how could we perturb or diminish this effect.And our hunch was that if you put people in a very stressful environment,if you distract them with disturbing, negative images,images of suffering and violence --sort of like what you might see on the news, unfortunately --that doing this might actually affect their attention.And that's indeed what we found.

因此，我们要做的是去查看之前提到的 这种脑电波活动模式 N170，看看这种脑电波模式是否会随着 实验对象注意力的改变而改变——即他们的注意力是在人脸图像上 还是在风景图像上。以下是我们的实验结果：我们发现当它们的注意力在人脸上时，N170会变大；而当它们的注意力在风景上时则会变小， 对应图上红色的线。你所看到的蓝线和红线之间的差距非常的重要。这个差距告诉我们，注意力 作为实验中的唯一变量因为实验对象看到的都是同样的图片，注意力可以改变人的认知结果。而且这一影响发生的十分迅速，仅仅在看到图片的170毫秒之内。在我们后来的研究中，我们想知道如何干扰或减弱 这种影响。我们认为， 如果把人们放在极具压力的环境中，如果使用让人非常不适的图片 来干扰他们，那些有关痛苦和暴力的图片不巧的是，这些图片 人们常常在新闻里看到的这有可能会影响他们的注意力。后来我们的实验结果 证实了我们的假设。

 

 

07:15

If we present stressful images while they're doing this experiment,this gap of attention shrinks, its power diminishes.So in some of our other studies,we wanted to see, OK, great --not great, actually, bad news that stress does this to the brain --but if it is the case that stress has this powerful influence on attentionthrough external distraction,what if we don't need external distraction,what if we distract ourselves?And to do this,we had to basically come up with an experimentin which we could have people generate their own mind-wandering.This is having off-task thoughtswhile we're engaged in an ongoing task of some sort.And the trick to mind-wandering is that essentially, you bore people.So hopefully there's not a lot of mind-wandering happening right now.When we bore people,people happily generate all kinds of internal content to occupy themselves.So we devised what might be consideredone of the world's most boring experiments.All the participants saw were a series of faces on the screen,one after another.They pressed the button every time they saw the face.That was pretty much it.Well, one trick was that sometimes, the face would be upside down,and it would happen very infrequently.On those trials they were told just to withhold the response.Pretty soon, we could tell that they were successfully mind-wandering,because they pressed the button when that face was upside down.Even though it's quite plain to see that it was upside down.So we wanted to know what happens when people have mind-wandering.And what we found was that,very similar to external stressand external distraction in the environment,internal distraction, our own mind wandering,also shrinks the gap of attention.It diminishes attention's power.

如果我们在实验中给 实验对象看有很压力的图片，这两条线之间的差距会缩小， 即影响会减弱。在我们别的实验里，我们发现，很不幸， 压力的确会对我们的大脑产生影响。不过我们刚才所研究的压力 是来自于外部的干扰，那么如果是来自于内部的压力干扰， 结果会怎么样？为了找出答案， 我们设计了一个实验。在这个实验里， 我们让实验对象走神。简而言之，让他们在做某些任务时，脑中却在想着与之无关的想法。我们通过让实验对象感觉无聊 来使他们走神。但愿我在说这些的时候， 在坐的各位没有走神。（笑声）当感觉到无聊的时候，人们就会不由自主的产生各种想法， 就会开始走神。于是我们设计了 可能是世界上最无聊的实验。所有的实验对象会在屏幕上 一个接一个看到一系列的人脸图片，每当他们看到一张图片， 就要按一次按钮。基本就是这样了。不过偶尔会出现一张 上下颠倒的图片，这个频率会非常的低。这种情况发生的时候，按我们的要求 实验对象理应什么也不做。但很快，他们也像看到其他图片一样 按下了按钮。于是我们就知道， 他们成功的开始走神了。因为分辨上线下颠倒的图片 一点也不困难。我们想知道当人走神时会发生什么？于是我们发现，跟来自外界的压力和干扰非常相似，走神这种来自内部的干扰，也会减少这个图像上的差距，影响我们的注意力。

 

 

08:54

So what do all of these studies tell us?They tell us that attention is very powerfulin terms of affecting our perception.Even though it's so powerful, it's also fragile and vulnerable.And things like stress and mind-wandering diminish its power.But that's all in the context of these very controlled laboratory settings.What about in the real world?What about in our actual day-to-day life?What about now?Where is your attention right now?To kind of bring it back,I'd like to make a prediction about your attentionfor the remainder of my talk.Are you up for it?Here's the prediction.You will be unaware of what I'm saying for four out of the next eight minutes.

那么，我们可以从以上的实验中 得到什么样的启示？那就是， 注意力对于认知的影响是巨大的。虽然注意力能带来强大的正面效益， 但它也很脆弱，很容易受影响。比如压力和走神都会影响注意力。然而我们的结论都是在 严格条件控制下的实验环境中得到那么在真实世界中又是什么样的呢？在我们的日常生活中又是什么样的呢？现在呢？你们的注意力现在在哪里？让我们回到我们的话题，我想预测一下在剩下的时间里 你们的注意力。准备好了吗？我的预测是这样的：在剩下的八分钟的演讲里， 有四分钟的内容你们会完全不记得。

 

 

09:34

(Laughter)

（笑声）

 

 

09:35

It's a challenge, so pay attention, please.Now, why am I saying this?I'm surely going to assume that you're going to remain seatedand, you know, graciously keep your eyes on me as I speak.But a growing body of literature suggests that we mind-wander,we take our mind away from the task at hand,about 50 percent of our waking moments.These might be small, little trips that we take away,private thoughts that we have.And when this mind-wandering happens,it can be problematic.Now I don't think there will be any dire consequenceswith you all sitting here today,but imagine a military leader missing four minutes of a military briefing,or a judge missing four minutes of testimony.Or a surgeon or firefighter missing any time.The consequences in those cases could be dire.So we might ask why do we do this?Why do we mind-wander so much?

这是一个挑战，请大家集中注意力。那么，我为什么要这么说？虽然你们依然在这里坐着，我在演讲的时候 你们也像以前一样礼貌的注视着我，但当这场演讲的时间越来越长时，我们就很容易会走神。我们每天清醒的时间里边， 有50%都在走神。像是走神、沉浸在自己的想法里边这些情况，事情虽小，但是当我们注意力不在的时候，很可能会出现问题。现在你们大家都在这儿坐着 当然不会出现什么大的问题，但是如果是军队的指挥官 在作战会议时候走神了四分钟，抑或是法官在听证词的时候 走神了四分钟，又或者是外科医生或者消防员 稍稍一走神，都可能带来灾难性的后果。所以我们不禁要问，为什么会这样？为什么我们这么容易走神？

 

 

10:28

Well, part of the answer is that our mind is an exquisite time-traveling master.It can actually time travel very easily.If we think of the mind as the metaphor of the music player, we see this.We can rewind the mind to the pastto reflect on events that have already happened, right?Or we can go and fast-future, to plan for the next thing that we want to do.And we land in this mental time-travel mode of the past or the futurevery frequently.And we land there often without our awareness,most times without our awareness,even if we want to be paying attention.Think of just the last time you were trying to read a book,got to the bottom of the page with no idea what the words were saying.This happens to us.And when this happens, when we mind-wander without an awareness that we're doing it,there are consequences.We make errors.We miss critical information, sometimes.And we have difficulty making decisions.What's worse is when we experience stress.When we're in a moment of overwhelm.We don't just reflect on the past when we rewind,we end up being in the past ruminating, reliving or regrettingevents that have already happened.

一部分原因是 我们的思维是一位时间旅行大师，我们的思维很容易 就会开始进行时间旅行。如果把我们的思维比作音乐播放器， 就像这样，我们可以倒带回到过去，冥想过去发生过的事情，也可以快进到未来， 计划我们未来要做的事情。像这样，我们的思维会非常频繁地进入时间旅行模式，而且通常是无意识的。当我们想要集中注意力的时候， 也经常会无意识的走神。回忆一下你们上次看书看了一页 却完全不知道讲了什么。走神这件事在我们每个人身上 都经常发生。当我们无意识的走神的时候，会有一些后果。我们会出错，有时我们会忽略了重要的信息，我们会变得抉择困难，更有甚者， 当我们在压力之下的时候，当我们临近崩溃的时候，一方面我们容易会沉湎于过去，我们不断的反省、重现、后悔 过去的事情。

 

 

11:41

Or under stress, we fast-forward the mind.Not just to productively plan.But we end up catastrophizing or worryingabout events that haven't happened yetand frankly may never happen.So at this point, you might be thinking to yourself, OK,mind-wandering's happening a lot.Often, it happens without our awareness.And under stress, it's even worse --we mind-wander more powerfully and more often.

在压力之下，我们也容易陷于未来，不是在制定未来的计划，而是在担心、惧怕 未来尚未发生的事情，甚至有些事情其实根本就不会发生。到目前为止，你们应该都理解了，走神经常发生， 而且是在我们不经意之间。在压力之下会更糟糕——我们可能会更频繁、更严重的走神。

 

 

12:05

Is there anything we can possibly do about this?And I'm happy to say the answer is yes.From our work, we're learningthat the opposite of a stressed and wandering mind is a mindful one.Mindfulness has to do with paying attentionto our present-moment experience with awareness.And without any kind of emotional reactivity of what's happening.It's about keeping that button right on playto experience the moment-to-moment unfolding of our lives.And mindfulness is not just a concept.It's more like practice,you have to embody this mindful mode of being to have any benefits.And a lot of the work that we're doing, we're offering people programsthat give our participants a suite of exercisesthat they should do dailyin order to cultivate more moments of mindfulness in their life.And for many of the groups that we work with, high-stress groups,like I said -- soldiers, medical professionals --for them, as we know, mind-wandering can be really dire.So we want to make sure we offer them very accessible,low time constraints to optimize the training,so they can benefit from it.And when we do this, what we can do is track to see what happens,not just in their regular livesbut in the most demanding circumstances that they may have.

那么我们有什么应对策略吗？我很高兴地说，有。通过我们的工作，我们了解到，压力和走神的对立面是专注。专注力能帮助我们将注意力 集中在现在，并且排除不良的情绪的影响。专注力是活在当下，充分的的感受和体验生活中的 一点一滴，一分一秒。专注力也并不仅仅是一个概念，它更是一种实践。你需要将这种专注深深植入灵魂， 才能获得它所带来的好处。我们做的很大一部分工作就是，为人们提供一整套的练习项目，参与者要坚持每日练习， 在生活中建立更多的多专注的时刻。很多参与我们项目的人门， 那些高压状态下的群体，正如我之前提到的 战士、医疗人员，对于他们来说， 走神的后果非常的可怕。因此我们确保我们为他们提供 易获取、低耗时的训练条件，从而最大化训练的效果， 让他们能从中获益。与之同时， 我们还追踪调查训练的效果，不仅仅是他们的日常生活上的效果，更包括了在他们可能所处的 极其严苛的环境下的效果。

 

 

13:27

Why do we want to do this?Well, we want to, for example, give it to students right around finals season.Or we want to give the training to accountants during tax season.Or soldiers and marines while they're deploying.Why is that?Because those are the momentsin which their attention is most likely to be vulnerable,because of stress and mind-wandering.And those are also the momentsin which we want their attention to be in peak shapeso they can perform well.So what we do in our researchis we have them take a series of attention tests.We track their attention at the beginning of some kind of high-stress interval,and then two months later, we track them again,and we want to see if there's a difference.Is there any benefit of offering them mindfulness training?Can we protect against the lapses in attentionthat might arise over high stress?So here's what we find.

我们这样做的目的是什么？因为我们想将这样的训练提供给 处于期末考试中的学生们，我们也想将这样的训练提供给 税收季节中的会计们，以及执行任务的战士和 海军陆战队员。为什么是这些人？因为他们在所面临的特殊时期里，由于外界压力和走神情况的存在， 他们的注意力会非常容易受到影响。并且这也是我们希望他们的注意力 能够处于巅峰状态的时期，这样他们才能高效的学习、 工作、执行任务。因此，在我们的研究之中，我们让他们进行一系列的 注意力测试。我们在他们开始一段高压时期之前 先检测一次他们的注意力情况，然后两个月后，我们再检测一次，我们想要对比一下两次的结果 看看有什么区别。为他们提供的专注力训练 是否起到了作用？我们能不能避免 由高压环境引发的注意力问题？以下是我们的发现的结论。