44. Decision making is an inherently emotional business.
inherently [ɪnˈhɪrəntlɪ] 天性地，固有地
45. One of the breakthroughs that helped us understand the interplay between emotion and decision making began with a man named Elliot, whose story has become one of the most famous in the world of brain research.
breakthroughs 突破点，突破性进展，重要的新发现
interplay 相互作用
46. Emotions measure the value of something, and help unconsciously guided us as we navigate through life - away from things that are likely to lead to pain and toward things that are likely to lead to fulfilment.
47. well informed 见多识广, diplomatic 圆滑的
48. he was proficient at making estimates based on incomplete information.
proficient in sth/at doing sth 精通的，熟练的
49. This understanding of decision making leads to some essential truths. Reason and emotion are not separated and opposed. Reason is nestled upon emotion and dependent upon it. Emotion assigns value to things, and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations. The human mind can be pragmatic but deep down it is romantic.
pragmatic 实用的；讲求实效的；务实的
opposed 对立的，相反的
50. Further, the mind or the self is no one thing. The mind is blindingly complicated series of parallel processes.
51. All information processing is emotional in that emotion is the energy that drives, organizes, amplifiies and attenuates cognitive activity and in turn is the experience and expression of this activity.
attenuate 减弱的;减少的
52. Each of them had come into the marriage with a certain unconscious mental map of how day-to-day life worked.
53. For Rob, reading the morning paper was a solitary activity done in silence by two people who happened to be sitting together. For Julia, the morning paper was a social activity and an occasion for conversation and observation about the state of the world.
solitary 独自的，独立的
54. Reforming the other person's habits would have to be a gradual process.
Break bad habits
55. Marital satisfaction generally follows a U-shaped curve. Couples are deliriously happy during the first years of marriage. Their self-reported satisfaction declines and bottoms out when their children hit adolescence, then it climbs again as they enter retirement.
Marital [ˈmærɪtl] 婚姻的
delirious 极激动的，兴奋的
bottom out 达到最低点 hit the ground/reach the low point
56. His feelings were there, but they were hidden somewhere inside in a place where he couldn't easily grasp or understand them. Even in those moments when he did have a sense of what he was feeling, the words could't come to help him express it.
57. He was no long aware of his surroundings, or how he might be perceived.
58. There's something to the old joke that women need to feel loved in order to have sex and men need to have sex in order to feel loved.
59. The thought of being aroused by animals was repellant.
60. copulate 交配 Highly educated women, less educated women.
61. An orgasm is not a reflex. It's a perception, a mental event. It starts with cascade of ever more intense physical and mental feedback loops.
62. Touches and sensations release chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin, which in turn generate even more sensory input, culminating in a complex and explosive light show in the brain.
culminate 达到极点
63. They lost all remaining self-consciousness --- any sense of time or where each other's bodies ended.
64. Up until well into her pregnancy, it is fair to say that a truly maternal thought never crossed her mind.
cross one's mind 想到
65. He wasn't only listening to tones, but also to the rhythms and patterns he would need to understand and communicate.
66. First he would have to build a set of bonds between them that would supersede all others.
supersede 取代
67. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past, we call genetics. The information revealed thousands of years ago, we call religion. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago, we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago, we call family and the information offered years, months, days or hours ago, we call education and advice.
68. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it.
profoundly 深深地，mold 形成
69. So even a newborn possesses this rich legacy, and is built to absorb more, and to contribute back to this long current.
legacy 遗产
70. Harold had all the physical features that naturally attract a mother's love: big eyes, a large forehead, a small mouth and chin.
71. Babies will forgo food in exchange for skin or even a towel that feels soft and nurturing. They will do it because physical contact is just as important as nourishment for their neural growth and survival.
72. Human skin has two types of receptors. One type transmits information to the somatosensory cortex for the identification and manipulation of objects. but the other type activates the social parts of the brain. It's form of body-to-body communication that sets off hormonal and chemical cascades, lowering blood pressure and delivering a sense of transcendent well-being.
somatosensory cortex [səˌmætəˈsɛnsəri] 躯体感觉皮质