Interpretação de Texto - UFG

NEUROSCIENCE
NO MORE...PLEASE!
A chocolate orgy for science’s sake.

How does your brain know when you’ve had too much of a good thing? Dana Small, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University’s School of Medicine in Chicago, decided to look into it by feeding people chocolate. She stood in the hallway of her department and recruited nine self-proclaimed cocoa-bean lovers, hooked them up to MRI machines, gave them chocolate, and then measured blood flow in their brains while they ate. Between bites, they were asked two questions: “Do you want another piece?” and “On a scale of minus-10 to plus-10, how much did you like the last piece?”

Of course, in the time the volunteers’ euphoria over tasting the confection turned to satiation, and, as it did, Small saw changes in their brain activity. When the subjects ate chocolate and enjoyed it, a region associated with mood – the medial part of the orbital frontal cortex – was active. But as they began to feel satiated, blood stopped flowing to that area and increased in another region probably responsible for the decision to stop eating – the adjacent lateral orbital frontal cortex.

Such images will help scientists better understand how addiction causes the brain’s normal response to a good thing to go awry. But the research also yielded a curious, unexpected result: Women ate twice as much chocolate as men before getting their fill. And while men stopped eating because they began to find the chocolate unpleasant, women stopped only when their bellies were stuffed. During the course of the study, Small also discovered another interesting fact: People of Asian descent tended to be satisfied after eating only one or two pieces of chocolate. Non-Asians, on the other hand, practically gorged themselves.

SINHA, G. NO MORE...PLEASE! Popular Science. New York, v. 259, n. 7, Jan. 2002, p. 42.

Vocabulário
to go awry: sair do curso normal
gorged themselves: empanturraram-se

Vocabulário do texto:

1. Da leitura do texto, conclui-se que

a) os participantes da pesquisa, de ambos os sexos, eram apreciadores de chocolate.
b) o experimento foi realizado por meio de exames laboratoriais.
c) a sensação de saciedade surge dez minutos após a ingestão incessante de chocolate.
d) a carência afetiva provoca, nas mulheres, um impulso para um maior consumo de chocolate.
e) descendentes asiáticos satisfazem-se quando comem grande quantidade de chocolate.

Resposta correta: a

Resolução: O texto afirma o seguinte: “recruited nine self-proclaimed cocoa-bean lovers” (recrutuou nove pessoas que se autoproclamaram amantes de semente de cacau (chocolate)). Isso significa que as pessoas que participaram da pesquisa apreciavam chocolate. A resposta correta é, portanto, a alternativa a.

2. Qual das seguintes perguntas o texto responde?

a) How many pieces of chocolate did the participants eat?
b) Why do the participants prefer chocolate to other sweets?
c) How much blood flowed in the participants’ brains while they ate?
d) Which part of the brain is active when we are satiated?
e) What is the reason why people become addicted to chocolate?

Resposta correta: d

Resolução: O texto afirma o seguinte: “But as they began to feel satiated, blood stopped flowing to that area and increased in another region probably responsible for the decision to stop eating – the adjacent lateral orbital frontal cortex”. (Mas quando começaram a se sentir saciados, o sangue parou de fluir para aquela área e aumentou em outra região, provavelmente a responsável pela decisão de parar de comer - o córtex frontal orbital lateral adjacente).

Assim, o texto responde à pergunta: qual parte do cérebro é ativada quando estamos saciados? A resposta correta é, portanto, a alternativa d.

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