Day reading Passage (Australian culture and culture shock)

13 
Detect (v) 
(C1) - to notice something that is partly hidden or not clear, or to discover 
something, especially using a special method:
Example: Some sounds cannot be detected by the human ear.
14 
Resolve (v) 
(C1) - to solve or end a problem or difficulty 
Example: Have you resolved the problem o f transport yet?

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Day 12
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.
Unlocking the mystery of dreams
Dreams have captivated thinkers since ancient times, but their mystery is now closer than
ever to resolution, thanks to new technology that allows scientists to watch the sleeping
brain at work.
A 
Thousands of years ago, dreams were seen as messages from the gods, and in 
many cultures, they are still considered prophetic, foretelling things to come. In 
ancient Greece, sick people slept at the temples of Asclepius, the god of medicine, 
in order to receive healing dreams. Modern dream science really begins at the 
end of the 19th century with Sigmund Freud, who theorized that dreams were the 
expression of unconscious desires often from childhood. He believed that exploring 
these hidden emotions through analysis could help cure mental illness. After Freud, 
the most important event in dream science was the discovery in the early 1950s of 
a phase of sleep characterized by intense brain activity and rapid eye movement 
(REM).
В 
Adult humans spend about a quarter of their sleep time in REM, much of it dreaming. 
People awakened in the midst of REM sleep reported vivid dreams, which led 
researchers to conclude that most dreaming took place during REM. Using a 
machine called the electroencephalograph (EEG), researchers were able to see that 
brain activity during REM resembled that of the brain when the body is awake. The 
mystery of REM sleep is that even though it may not be essential, it is universal - at 
least in mammals and even birds. Some researchers think REM may have evolved 
for physiological reasons. “One thing that’s unique about mammals and birds is that 
they regulate body temperature,” says neuroscientist Jerry Siegel, director of UCLA’s 
Center for Sleep Research. “There’s no good evidence that any coldblooded animal 
has REM sleep.” REM sleep heats up the brain and non-REM cools it off, Siegel 
says, and that could mean that the changing sleep cycles allow the brain to repair 
itself. “It seems likely that REM sleep is filling a basic physiological function and that 
dreams are a kind of a side-effect, or by-product of this.
С 
There is great disagreement about the psychological function of dreams and
researchers have come up with some differing theories. On one side are scientists 
like Harvard’s Allan Hobson, who believes that dreams are essentially random. In 
the 1970s, Hobson and his colleague Robert McCarley proposed what they called 
the “activation-synthesis hypothesis,” which describes how dreams are formed by 
nerve signals sent out during REM sleep from a small area at the base of the brain

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Reading Passage 3
called the pons. These signals, the researchers said, activate the images that we 
call dreams. That raised questions about dream research. If dreams are insignificant 
night-time images created by the brain, what is the point of studying them?
D 
But more recently, new theories have made some scientists take dreams more
seriously. In 1997, Mark Solms of the University of Cape Town in South Africa found 
that there was more than one mechanism in the brain for activating dreams. Since 
then, Solms has argued that medical diagnostic equipment like functional magnetic 
resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) that helps 
researchers watch dreaming brains might actually lend new support to Freud’s ideas 
because the parts of the brain that are most active during dreaming control emotion. 
Further research has supported Solm’s findings. Scientists using PET and fMRI 
technology to watch the dreaming brain have found that one of the most active areas 
during REM is the limbic system, which controls our emotions.
E 
Much less active during REM sleep is the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with 
logical thinking. That could explain why dreams in REM sleep often lack a coherent 
story line. Some researchers have also found that people dream in non-REM sleep 
as well, although those dreams generally are less vivid. Another active part of the 
brain in REM sleep is the anterior cingulate cortex, which detects differences or 
inconsistencies. Eric Nofzinger, director of the Sleep Neuroimaging Program at the 
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, thinks that could be why people often solve 
tricky problems in their dreams.
F 
Deirdre Barrett, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, would agree. In her 
book “The Committee of Sleep,” she describes how painters like Jasper Johns and 
Salvador Dali found inspiration in their dreams. In her own research on problem 
solving through dreams, Barrett has found that even ordinary people can solve 
simple problems in their lives (like how to fit old furniture into a new apartment) if they 
focus on the dilemma before they fall asleep. There is also evidence that dreaming 
helps certain kinds of learning. Some researchers have found that dreaming about 
physical tasks, like a gymnast’s floor routine, enhances performance.
G 
Whatever the function of dreams at night, they clearly can play a role in therapy 
during the day. The University of Maryland’s Clara Hill, who has studied the use 
of dreams in therapy, says that dreams are a “back door” into a patient’s thinking. 
“Dreams reveal stuff about you that you didn’t know was there,” she says. The 
therapists she trains to work with patients’ dreams use dream imagery to uncover 
hidden emotions and feelings. Rosalind Cartwright from the university medical center 
in Chicago has been studying depression in divorced men and women, and she is 
finding that “good dreamers,” people who have vivid dreams with strong story lines, 
are less likely to remain depressed. She thinks that dreaming helps diffuse powerful 
emotions. “Dreaming is a mental-health activity,” she says.

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Day 12
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A -G , in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
27 
a reference to the significance of dreams on artists’ work
28 
a concern about the usefulness of dream research
29 
the types of living creatures that have REM sleep
30 
research results linking dreams to psychological well-being
31 
an account of how modern research tools have strengthened Freud’s theory
Questions 27-31
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A -G .
Questions 32-35
Choose the correct letter, А, В, С or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 32-35 on your answer sheet.
32 
In ancient times, people thought that dreams