実践ビジネス英語ディクテーション (9/29,30)

こんにちは。NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。
Lesson 12のテーマは、‘Staying Sharp’（脳をシャープに）でした。Vignetteでは、物忘れと老化、さらには認知症の予防が話題になりました。物忘れの理由の1つは脳の記憶領域の不足―情報の詰め込み過ぎだということです。何をunloadしましょうか・・・。
“Talk the Talk”では後半でHeatherさんがsuperager（スーパーエイジャー）について興味深いお話をされています。スーパーエイジャーを対象にした研究で、「若い脳」を得る方法の1つが判明したということです。

Staying Sharp
（S: 杉田敏先生　H: Heather Howardさん）

S: Well, our current vignette starts with Ueda Shota noticing a string on Steve Lyons’ finger, which Lyons says is a memory jogger.
Do you ever do anything like that, Heather?

H: That sounded so sweetly analogue to me, took me back to the days before our smartphone calendars and alarms and such.
Long ago, before I was married, I used to put a ring on my left-hand ring finger when I needed to remember something.
I usually didn’t wear a ring on that finger then, so it felt unnatural and I would think to myself, “Why have I got this on…oh right, I need to do X.”
It was pretty effective, I found.
After I got married, and before I got my smartphone, I would put a ring on one of my index fingers.

S: Ueda and Lyons say that forgetfulness is often the result of information overload, not just aging.
We have so much to do and think about something’s bound to give.

H: That is proved true every day, I think, by every mother and father on earth.
I’ve had so many things to remember and do since my daughter came along, that I seem to forget things every single day.
I get out the door with her in the morning thinking, “I’m on fire today, I got everything and we’re on time…and oh dang it, I forgot the blanket and her apple slices and my own purse!”
If we can’t reduce the number of things on our plate―and sometimes we just can’t―then we should be good to ourselves and remember, ha ha, that nobody’s perfect and ultimately everything important will get done at some point.

S: The vignette also talks about the brain fitness classes being take by Collins’ aunt.

H: I read a fascinating article late last year about a group of people dubbed “superagers.”
They were elderly people whose memory and attention were said to be on par with those of healthy, active 25-year-olds.
The author of the article said she and her fellow researchers were still examining what kind of activities might improve people’s chances of staying mentally sharp in their golden years, but that working hard at something was the best answer they had at the moment.
Apparently, activity has been seen to increase in critical brain regions when people do difficult tasks, physical or mental.

S: Like learning a new language?

H: Exactly. The researchers said that when there was more activity in the brain regions in question, people tended to feel bad, as in tired or frustrated.
The superagers soldier on past those bad feelings, and according to studies, get a more youthful brain as a reward.
So, "work hard enough to feel some ‘yuck’", she said.

S: What would involve some yuck for you?

H: Learning a musical instrument, probably.
I’ve only tried that briefly a few times in my life, and it didn’t come easily at all.
So, maybe if I tried again to learn piano or the violin, that would help keep me sharp mentally.
I’ve always admired people who can play the violin especially.

お読みくださり、ありがとうございました♪