第1题:
26. What does this talk mainly tell us?
【解析】文章提到：脑波扫描可能使得人们与脑死亡病人交流成为可能。故选C。
第2题:
27. For the 6 healthy volunteers, which part of the brain did the hand-squeezing imagination activate?
【解析】根据文章可知实验结果大为不同：攥拳头激发了大脑的左半部，而动脚趾激发了大脑的中部。故选A。
第3题:
28. Of the 23 vegetative patients, how many were found to be able to consistently respond to yes-or-no questions?
【解析】原文信息是…studied 23 vegetative patients...found 4 patients were able to consistently respond to yes-or-no questions by changing their brain activity，即参加实验的23个植物人病人中有4个被发现对问题有持续反应。故选C。
第4题:
29. What can we learn from the study on the patient declared vegetative 2 years earlier?
【解析】根据文章描述，研究者通过EEG信号观察，那些两年前被诊断为植物人的病人，即可以知道病人在想些什么，证明那些是有大脑活动的，并不是真正的脑死亡。故选B。
第5题:
30. When EEG signals indicate that a vegetative patient is responsive, which of the following is NOT true?
【解析】通过对第26题与第29题的解答，可知A和B选项的表述正确。文章最后提到这一研究结果对于家属和医生护理有很好的借鉴意义，所以D项正确。文章没有提到C项。
原文：
(26) Brain wave scanners might make it possible to communicate with people who are considered brain-dead, according to a new study reported in the Economist.
A couple of recent studies have shown that a small minority of vegetative patients might be more aware than they seem. Now, Damien Cruse, with the Medical Research Councils Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, thinks EEG machines will be able to help these patients communicate.
The team asked 6 healthy volunteers to wear eletroencephalo-graph (EEG) devices, which connect electrodes to a person’s head. They were asked to respond to an audible tone by imagining that they were squeezing their right hands or wiggling the toes of both feet. (27) The researchers found that the volunteers’ brain responses were clearly different—the hand-squeezing activated the left-hand side of the brain, and the toe-wiggling produced a response in the center of the brain.
Then they tested the procedure on a patient with locked-in syndrome, who was almost completely paralyzed but retains some control of his eye movements. His brain responses were the same. Finally, (29) they tested the procedure on a patient who had been declared vegetative 2 years earlier. They watched the EEG signals and were able to deduce which movement the patient was imagining.
(28) The same team had studied 23 vegetative patients over 4 years and found 4 patients were able to consistently respond to yes-or-no questions by changing their brain activity. They were asked to imagine playing tennis when they wanted to give one response, or walking around the house when they wanted to give the other.
(30) Since the patients were responsive, they’re not technically vegetative, the researchers say. Proof that they can communicate that they’re not brain-dead would have major implications for family members’ and doctors’ decisions about their care.
