III. Reading Comprehension: Choose the most appropriate answer. (2 points each, 30 pointsin total) Passage A: Questions 36-40         Humans have long thought about the nature of beauty. Artists from every century have tried toanswer the question, "What is beauty?" With new technology that allows scientists to learn moreabout the brain, we can learn more about what makes art beautiful.Have you ever looked at a painting of lines and dots and thought, "I could do that"? Whatmakes simple lines and shapes art? It probably lies in the way our brain looks at visual images. Inthe 1950s, two scientists, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, received the Nobel Prize for a series ofexperiments that showed how the brain "sees" things. They found that the cells of the brain "saw"lines and angles much better than circles, and that they noticed contrast, like black and white, muchmore than brightness.        While those in the science community will credit the Nobel Prize winners with the findings,it's actually artists that seem to have had an instinct about how the brain works long before Hubeland Wiesel's experiments. Think about Pablo Picasso's later paintings. He exaggerates certainfeatures-a nose here, an eye there--and although the painting doesn't look exactly like the model,you recognize what it is immediately. How is this possible?
       V. S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist, thinks he can explain Picasso's success. He comparesPicasso's paintings to something that happens in nature. There is a certain kind of bird that has a reddot on its beak. When baby birds see the mother bird's beak, they peck at it, begging for food. Ifyou paint a red dot on a stick, or even better, three red dots on a stick, the baby birds will peck evenmore-their response is even more intense. This is what we as viewers do when we see a paintinglike Picasso's, we can recognize the whole from a few important details, just like the baby birds.
       Great artists have a talent not only for drawing but also for unlocking the puzzles of the brain.Just as Mondrian somehow knew he could reduce images to lines and angles, and Picasso sensed hecould exaggerate details, Leonardo da Vinci must have had an instinct about how people looked atthings for the first time. Paul Cezanne, on the other hand, stumbled upon something about how ourthinking works. Our brains are more interested when they have a problem to solve. Cezanne's laterpaintings make viewers solve the problem of missing information. A single blue line mightrepresent a river, a green smudge a tree. People are attracted to the paintings essentially becausetheir brains fill in the missing information.
       Semir Zeki is a scientist in England who is looking at the parts of the brain that are workingwhen we see beautiful things. In one study, he looked at images of people's brains when theyviewed things they described as beautiful or ugly. When they looked at the beautiful things, the partof the brain involved with emotion and reward was active. When they looked at the ugly things, thepart of the brain involved with wanting to get away or escape was active. He's also discovered thatbrain cells are only active or excited when they see certain views of a face--something greatportrait painters seem to have sensed.
       As scientists learn more about the brain, we may gain a stronger understanding of how greatartists inspire us.
【題組】36. What did Hubel and Wiesel research?
(A)How our vision works.
(B) How circles and lines contrast.
(C) How our brains solve puzzles.
(D)How painters change over time.