Gravity Influences How We Make Decisions, Says New Study

　　新研究发现，重力会影响我们做决定。

　　Gravity plays a fundamental role in human behaviour and cognition.

　　重力在人类行为和认知中起着重要作用。

　　The central nervous system does not have "specialised" sensors for gravity. Rather, gravity is inferred through the integration of several sensory signals in a process termed graviception.

　　中枢神经系统没有“专门的”重力传感器。准确说，重力是通过在一个称为重力感受的过程、整合几个感官信号来推断的。

　　This involves vision, our balance system and information from the joints and muscles.

　　这涉及到视觉、我们的平衡系统以及关节和肌肉传来的信息。

　　Sophisticated organs inside the inner ear are particularly important in this process.

　　内耳里复杂精细的器官在这个过程中尤为重要。

　　Under terrestrial gravity, when our head is upright, small stones – the vestibular otoliths – are perfectly balanced on a viscous fluid.

　　在地心引力作用下，当我们的头部直立时，前庭耳石的小结石在粘性流体中完全平衡。

　　When we move the head, for instance looking up, gravity makes the fluid move and this triggers a signal which informs the brain that our head is no longer upright.

　　当我们移动头部时，比如说向上看，重力使液体移动，这会触发一个信号，告诉大脑我们的头部不再是直立状态。

　　We investigated whether alterations in gravity impact the choice between routine and novel behaviour.

　　我们研究了重力变化是否会影响人们在常规行为和新行为之间的选择。

　　We asked participants to come to the lab and produce sequences of numbers as randomly as possible.

　　我们要求参与者来到实验室，尽可能随机地产生数字序列。

　　But how does this change under the influence of gravity? We manipulated how the otoliths sense gravity by changing the orientation of participants' bodies with respect to the direction of terrestrial gravity by asking them to lie down.

　　但在重力的影响下，会发生怎样的变化呢?我们通过要求参与者躺下，改变参与者身体相对于地球重力方向的方向来操纵耳石感知重力。

　　Our results indicate that lying down does seem to influence how people make decisions, with participants struggling with random number generation.

　　我们的研究结果表明，躺下似乎确实影响了人们的决策方式，参与者生成随机数时很吃力。

　　This indicates that people are therefore less prone to generating novel behaviours in the absence of gravity.

　　这表明人们在没有重力的情况下不太容易产生创新性的行为。