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经典TED英语演讲稿【第一篇】

I'd like to share with you a discovery that I made a few months ago while writing an article for Italian Wired. I always keep my thesaurus handy whenever I'm writing anything, but I'd already finished editing the piece, and I realized that I had never once in my life looked up the word "disabled" to see what I'd find.

Let me read you the entry. "Disabled, adjective: crippled, helpless, useless, wrecked, stalled, maimed, wounded, mangled, lame, mutilated, run-down, worn-out, weakened, impotent, castrated, paralyzed, handicapped, senile, decrepit, laid-up, done-up, done-for, done-in cracked-up, counted-out; see also hurt, useless and weak. Antonyms, healthy, strong, capable." I was reading this list out loud to a friend and at first was laughing, it was so ludicrous, but I'd just gotten past "mangled," and my voice broke, and I had to stop and collect myself from the emotional shock and impact that the assault from these words unleashed.

You know, of course, this is my raggedy old thesaurus so I'm thinking this must be an ancient print date, right? But, in fact, the print date was the early 1980s, when I would have been starting primary school and forming an understanding of myself outside the family unit and as related to the other kids and the world around me. And, needless to say, thank God I wasn't using a thesaurus back then. I mean, from this entry, it would seem that I was born into a world that perceived someone like me to have nothing positive whatsoever going for them, when in fact, today I'm celebrated for the opportunities and adventures my life has procured.

So, I immediately went to look up the 2009 online edition, expecting to find a revision worth noting. Here's the updated version of this entry. Unfortunately, it's not much better. I find the last two words under "Near Antonyms," particularly unsettling: "whole" and "wholesome."

So, it's not just about the words. It's what we believe about people when we name them with these words. It's about the values behind the words, and how we construct those values. Our language affects our thinking and how we view the world and how we view other people. In fact, many ancient societies, including the Greeks and the Romans, believed that to utter a curse verbally was so powerful, because to say the thing out loud brought it into existence. So, what reality do we want to call into existence: a person who is limited, or a person who's empowered? By casually doing something as simple as naming a person, a child, we might be putting lids and casting shadows on their power. Wouldn't we want to open doors for them instead?

One such person who opened doors for me was my childhood doctor at the duPont Institute in Wilmington, Delaware. His name was Dr. Pizzutillo, an Italian American, whose name, apparently, was too difficult for most Americans to pronounce, so he went by Dr. P. And Dr. P always wore really colorful bow ties and had the very perfect disposition to work with children.

I loved almost everything about my time spent at this hospital, with the exception of my physical therapy sessions. I had to do what seemed like innumerable repetitions of exercises with these thick, elastic bands -- different colors, you know -- to help build up my leg muscles, and I hated these bands more than anything -- I hated them, had names for them. I hated them. And, you know, I was already bargaining, as a five year-old child, with Dr. P to try to get out of doing these exercises, unsuccessfully, of course. And, one day, he came in to my session -- exhaustive and unforgiving, these sessions -- and he said to me, "Wow. Aimee, you are such a strong and powerful little girl, I think you're going to break one of those bands. When you do break it, I'm going to give you a hundred bucks."

Now, of course, this was a simple ploy on Dr. P's part to get me to do the exercises I didn't want to do before the prospect of being the richest five-year-old in the second floor ward, but what he effectively did for me was reshape an awful daily occurrence into a new and promising experience for me. And I have to wonder today to what extent his vision and his declaration of me as a strong and powerful little girl shaped my own view of myself as an inherently strong, powerful and athletic person well into the future.

This is an example of how adults in positions of power can ignite the power of a child. But, in the previous instances of those thesaurus entries, our language isn't allowing us to evolve into the reality that we would all want, the possibility of an individual to see themselves as capable. Our language hasn't caught up with the changes in our society, many of which have been brought about by technology. Certainly, from a medical standpoint, my legs, laser surgery for vision impairment, titanium knees and hip replacements for aging bodies that are allowing people to more fully engage with their abilities, and move beyond the limits that nature has imposed on them -- not to mention social networking platforms allow people to self-identify, to claim their own descriptions of themselves, so they can go align with global groups of their own choosing. So, perhaps technology is revealing more clearly to us now what has always been a truth: that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our society, and that the human ability to adapt is our greatest asset.

经典TED英语演讲稿【第二篇】

When Dorothy was a little girl, she wasfascinated by her goldfish. Her father explained to her that fish swim byquickly wagging their tails to propel themselves through the water. Withouthesitation, little Dorothy responded, "Yes, Daddy, and fish swim backwardsby wagging their heads."

当多萝西还是一个小女孩的时候，她被她的金鱼迷住了。她的父亲向她解释，鱼是通过快速摇尾推动自己在水中前进。毫无犹豫地，小多萝西回答道，“是的，爸爸，而且鱼会通过摇头来后退。”

In her mind, it was a fact as true as anyother. Fish swim backwards by wagging their heads. She believed it.

在她的心里，这是一个确切的事实。鱼通过摇头来后退。她坚信如此。

Our lives are full of fish swimmingbackwards. We make assumptions and faulty leaps of logic. We harbor bias. Weknow that we are right, and they are wrong. We fear the worst. We strive forunattainable perfection. We tell ourselves what we can and cannot do. In ourminds, fish swim by in reverse frantically wagging their heads and we don'teven notice them.

我们的生活中充满着倒游的鱼。我们制造假设和错误跳跃的逻辑。我们心怀偏见。我们知道我们是对的，而他们是错的。我们害怕最糟糕的。我们力求无法获得的完美。我们告诉自己什么是我们能做的和不能做的。在我们心里，鱼是通过往相反方向疯狂摇头来游泳的，而我们甚至不曾察觉过它们。

I'm going to tell you five facts aboutmyself. One fact is not true. One: I graduated from Harvard at 19 with anhonors degree in mathematics. Two: I currently run a construction company inOrlando. Three: I starred on a television sitcom. Four: I lost my sight to arare genetic eye disease. Five: I served as a law clerk to two US Supreme Courtjustices. Which fact is not true? Actually, they're all true. Yeah. They're alltrue.

我想告诉你们五件关于我的事实。其中有一件不是真的。第一：我19岁的时候以数学荣誉学士学位毕业于哈佛大学。第二：我现在在奥兰多经营着一家建筑公司。第三：我主演过一部电视情景剧。第四：我因为患上一种罕有的遗传性眼疾而失去了视力。第五：我曾经给两位美国最高法院的法官当过法律助手。哪一个不是真的呢？事实上，它们都是真的。是的，它们都是真的。

At this point, most people really only careabout the television show.

这时候，大部分人其实都只关心那部电视剧。

I know this from experience. OK, so theshow was NBC's "Saved by the Bell: The New Class." And I playedWeasel Wyzell, who was the sort of dorky, nerdy character on the show, whichmade it a very major acting challenge for me as a 13-year-old boy.

这是经验告诉我的。好吧，那部电视剧是NBC的“SavedbytheBell:TheNewClass."而我饰演了WeaselWyzell，一个在剧中带点笨拙书呆子性格的角色，对于13岁的我来说，这是一个很重大的演出挑战。

Now, did you struggle with number four, myblindness? Why is that? We make assumptions about so-called disabilities. As ablind man, I confront others' incorrect assumptions about my abilities everyday. My point today is not about my blindness, however. It's about my blind taught me to live my life eyes wide open. It taught me to spotthose backwards-swimming fish that our minds create. Going blind cast them intofocus.

现在，你是否纠结于第四个事实，我的失明？为什么会这样呢？我们对所谓的残疾做出一些假设。作为盲人，我每天都面对别人对我能力的错误假设。然而，我今天的重点不在于我的失明。而是在于我的视野。失明教会我用开阔的眼界去生活。它教会我去发现那些倒游的鱼，我们内心创造出来的鱼。失明使它们变成了焦点。

What does it feel like to see? It'simmediate and passive. You open your eyes and there's the world. Seeing isbelieving. Sight is truth. Right? Well, that's what I thought.

看得见是怎么样的一种感觉？是即时并且被动的。你睁开双眼，世界就在你眼前。看见什么相信什么。眼见为实。对吧？好吧，我当初是这么想的。

Then, from age 12 to 25, my retinasprogressively deteriorated. My sight became an increasingly bizarre carnivalfunhouse hall of mirrors and illusions. The salesperson I was relieved to spotin a store was really a mannequin. Reaching down to wash my hands, I suddenlysaw it was a urinal I was touching, not a sink, when my fingers felt its trueshape.

接着，从12岁到15岁，我的视网膜逐渐衰弱。我的视像变成了愈加奇异的嘉年华游乐场里的哈哈镜。我在商店里好不容易发现的销售员实际上是一个人体模型。俯下身去洗手，当我的手指感受到它的真实形状，我意识到我去触摸的是小便池，而不是洗手池。

A friend described the photograph in my hand, and only then I could seethe image depicted. Objects appeared, morphed and disappeared in my reality. Itwas difficult and exhausting to see. I pieced together fragmented, transitoryimages, consciously analyzed the clues, searched for some logic in my crumblingkaleidoscope, until I saw nothing at all.

一位朋友向我描述我手中的照片，只有在那时候我才能明白图像描画了些什么。物体在我的现实中出现、变形和消失。看见成为了一件困难的使我筋疲力尽的事情。我把支离破碎的、片刻的图像拼接起来，凭感觉分析线索，在我破碎的万花筒中寻找符合逻辑的对应，直到我什么都看不见。

I learned that what we see is not universaltruth. It is not objective reality. What we see is a unique, personal, virtualreality that is masterfully constructed by our brain.

我认识到我们所看到的并不即是普遍真理。并不是客观现实。我们所看到的是独一无二的虚拟现实，它是由我们的大脑巧妙地构造出来的。

Let me explain with a bit of amateurneuroscience. Your visual cortex takes up about 30 percent of your 's compared to approximately eight percent for touch and two to threepercent for hearing. Every second, your eyes can send your visual cortex as manyas two billion pieces of information. The rest of your body can send your brainonly an additional billion. So sight is one third of your brain by volume andcan claim about two thirds of your brain's processing resources. It's nosurprise then that the illusion of sight is so compelling. But make no mistakeabout it: sight is an illusion.

请让我以外行的身份解释一遍神经系统学。你的视觉皮层占据了你脑部的大概30%。相比于触觉的8%以及听觉的2-3%。每一秒钟，你的双眼能够向你的视觉皮层传达多达二十亿的信息片段。其余的身体部分加起来也仅能够传达另外的十亿。所以视觉占据了你脑部容量的三分之一并且占用了你脑部中三分之二的信息处理资源。因此意想得到的是视觉幻象是多么的令人信服。但是别误会了：我们所看到的只是一种幻象。

Here's where it gets interesting. To createthe experience of sight, your brain references your conceptual understanding ofthe world, other knowledge, your memories, opinions, emotions, mentalattention. All of these things and far more are linked in your brain to yoursight. These linkages work both ways, and usually occur subconsciously. So for example, what you see impacts how you feel, and the way you feel can literally change what you see.

这是事情变得有趣的地方。为了制造视觉经验，你的大脑参考了你对这个世界的概念性理解，其它知识、你的记忆、看法、情绪和心理关注。所有的这些东西和以及其它的都连结于你的大脑和视觉景象之间。这些连结是双向作用的，并且常常在潜意识中发生。举例子来说，你所看到的会影响到你的感觉，而你的感觉又能够直接改变你所看到的。

Numerous studies demonstrate this. If you are asked toestimate the walking speed of a man in a video, for example, your answer willbe different if you're told to think about cheetahs or turtles. A hill appearssteeper if you've just exercised, and a landmark appears farther away if you'rewearing a heavy backpack. We have arrived at a fundamental contradiction.

许多的研究证明了这一点。如果你被要求去估计视频中人物的行走速度，举例来说，在被告知去想着猎豹或者乌龟的情况下，你的答案将会不一样。如果你刚刚运动完，你会感觉山变陡峭了，如果你背着一个很重的背包，眼前的目的地看起来距离更远。我们在这里遇到了一种基本的矛盾。

What you see is a complex mental construction of your own making, but you experienceit passively as a direct representation of the world around you. You createyour own reality, and you believe it. I believed mine until it broke apart. Thedeterioration of my eyes shattered the illusion.

你肉眼所看到的东西是你自己创造的一种复杂的心智建造，但是你被动地经历着它让它作为你周遭世界的一种直接呈现。你创造了属于你自己的现实并且深信着它。我深信于我的现实直到它瓦解了。我双眼的衰退粉碎了这种幻象。

You see, sight is just one way we shape ourreality. We create our own realities in many other ways. Let's take fear asjust one example. Your fears distort your reality. Under the warped logic offear, anything is better than the uncertain. Fear fills the void at all costs,passing off what you dread for what you know, offering up the worst in place ofthe ambiguous, substituting assumption for reason. Psychologists have a greatterm for it: awfulizing.

你看，视觉只是我们认识世界的一种途径。我们可以通过许多其它的方式去创造属于我们自己的现实。让我们来举恐惧作为一个例子。你的恐惧扭曲了你的现实。在扭曲的恐惧逻辑影响下，任何事情都比未知要好。恐惧不惜一切代价填补空白，把你所惧怕的冒充成你所知道的，让最糟糕取代了不明确，使假设代替了原因。心理学家对此有一个很好的术语：往坏处想。

Right? Fear replaces the unknown with theawful. Now, fear is self-realizing. When you face the greatest need to lookoutside yourself and think critically, fear beats a retreat deep inside yourmind, shrinking and distorting your view, drowning your capacity for criticalthought with a flood of disruptive emotions. When you face a compellingopportunity to take action, fear lulls you into inaction, enticing you topassively watch its prophecies fulfill themselves.

对吧？恐惧把未知的替换成了可怕的。现在，恐惧在自我实现着。当你非常迫切的需要去客观看待自己并进行批判性思考的时候，恐惧在你的内心深处打起了退堂鼓，收缩并扭曲你的观点，以洪水般涌现的破坏性情绪淹没你批判思考的能力。当你面对一个极具吸引力的机会去采取行动时，恐惧误导你去无所作为，诱使你被动地看着它的预言一个个实现成真。

When I was diagnosed with my blindingdisease, I knew blindness would ruin my life. Blindness was a death sentencefor my independence. It was the end of achievement for me. Blindness meant Iwould live an unremarkable life, small and sad, and likely alone. I knew was a fiction born of my fears, but I believed it. It was a lie, but itwas my reality, just like those backwards-swimming fish in little Dorothy'smind. If I had not confronted the reality of my fear, I would have lived it. Iam certain of that.

当我被诊出患有致盲眼疾时，我料到失明将会毁了我的生活。失明对我的独立能力判了死刑。它是我一生成就的终点。失明意味着我将度过平凡的一生，渺小且凄惨，极有可能孤独终老。我就知道会这样。这是我因为恐惧带来的胡编乱造，但我相信了。它是一个谎言，但它曾是我的现实。就像小多萝西内心那些倒游的鱼一样。如若我不曾面对过我内心恐惧创造出来的现实，我会就那样活着。我很确定。

So how do you live your life eyes wideopen? It is a learned discipline. It can be taught. It can be practiced. I willsummarize very briefly.

所以你们如何去以开阔的眼界生活呢？这是一个需要学习的学科。它能被传授。它能被练习。我简单地总结一下。

Hold yourself accountable for every moment,every thought, every detail. See beyond your fears. Recognize your your internal strength. Silence your internal critic. Correct yourmisconceptions about luck and about success. Accept your strengths and yourweaknesses, and understand the difference. Open your hearts to your bountifulblessings.

让自己学会负责，对每一时刻，每个想法，每个细节。超越你内心的恐惧。识别出你所作的假设。展现你内在的能力。消除你内心的批判。修正你对于运气和成功的错误概念。接受自己的长处和短处，并清楚认识它们之间的区别。打开你的心扉去迎接对你满满的祝福。

Your fears, your critics, your heroes, yourvillains -- they are your excuses, rationalizations, shortcuts, justifications,your surrender. They are fictions you perceive as reality. Choose to seethrough them. Choose to let them go. You are the creator of your reality. Withthat empowerment comes complete responsibility.

你的恐惧，你的批判，你的英雄，你的敌人——他们都是你的借口、合理化作用、捷径、辩护、屈服。它们是你错认为现实的小说。尝试选择看穿它们。尝试让它们远离自己。你是自我现实的创造者。伴随这种权利而来的是你需要负起全部的责任。

I chose to step out of fear's tunnel intoterrain uncharted and undefined. I chose to build there a blessed life. Farfrom alone, I share my beautiful life with Dorothy, my beautiful wife, with ourtriplets, whom we call the Tripskys, and with the latest addition to thefamily, sweet baby Clementine.

我选择走出恐惧的隧道，步入了未知的领域。我选择在那里构建幸福的人生。远离孤单，我分享我的美好生活，与多萝西，我美丽的妻子，与我们的三胞胎，我们称之为“Tripskys”，还有新添的家庭成员，可爱的宝贝克莱蒙蒂。

What do you fear? What lies do you tellyourself? How do you embellish your truth and write your own fictions? Whatreality are you creating for yourself?

你在害怕什么？你在欺骗自己什么？你是如何修饰自己的真相，编写自己的小说？你在为自己创造着怎么样的现实？

In your career and personal life, in yourrelationships, and in your heart and soul, your backwards-swimming fish do yougreat harm. They exact a toll in missed opportunities and unrealized potential,and they engender insecurity and distrust where you seek fulfillment andconnection. I urge you to search them out.

在你的职业生涯和个人生活中，在你的人际关系中，在你的内心和灵魂中，倒游的鱼给你带来巨大的伤害。它们使你为错失的机会以及尚未实现的潜能付出代价。它们在你寻求满足与联系时引起你的不安以及不信任。我呼吁大家把它们找出来。

Helen Keller said that the only thing worsethan being blind is having sight but no vision. For me, going blind was aprofound blessing, because blindness gave me vision. I hope you can see what Isee.

海伦·凯勒曾说过，唯一比失明更糟糕的是拥有视力，却没有远见。失明对我来说是一种深深的祝福，因为失明给予了我远见。我衷心希望你们也能看见我所看见的。

Thank you.(Applause)

谢谢。（掌声）

Bruno Giussani: Isaac, before you leave thestage, just a question. This is an audience of entrepreneurs, of doers, ofinnovators. You are a CEO of a company down in Florida, and many are probablywondering, how is it to be a blind CEO? What kind of specific challenges do youhave, and how do you overcome them?

布鲁诺·朱萨尼：艾萨克，在你离开之前，我想问一个问题。在座的各位都是创业者、实干家、创新者。你是佛罗里达一家公司的执行总裁，很多人大概都会好奇，身为一名失明的执行总裁究竟是怎么样的呢？这使你面临哪些具体的挑战，而你又是怎么克服它们的呢？

Isaac Lidsky: Well, the biggest challengebecame a blessing. I don't get visual feedback from people.

艾萨克·利德斯基：好吧，最大的挑战成了一种祝福。我看不到别人的反应。

BG: What's that noise there? IL: Yeah. So,for example, in my leadership team meetings, I don't see facial expressions orgestures. I've learned to solicit a lot more verbal feedback. I basically forcepeople to tell me what they think. And in this respect, it's become, like Isaid, a real blessing for me personally and for my company, because wecommunicate at a far deeper level, we avoid ambiguities, and most important, myteam knows that what they think truly matters.

布：有什么声音在哪里吗？艾：是的。比如说在我的领导团队的会议中，我无法看到别人的表情或者手势。我学会去征求更多的言语反馈。我基本都要求人们把他们的想法告诉我。正因如此，它成为了，如我所说，对我个人还有我公司的一种真正的祝福。因为我们获得了更深层次的沟通。我们避免了歧义，还有更重要的，我的团队清楚知道他们的想法是真的要紧的。

BG: Isaac, thank you for coming to TED. IL:Thank you, Bruno.

布：艾萨克，感谢你来到了TED。艾：谢谢你，布鲁诺。

经典TED英语演讲稿【第三篇】

What I'd like to do today is talk about one of my favorite subjects, and that is the neuroscience of sleep.

Now, there is a sound -- (Alarm clock) -- aah, it worked -- a sound that is desperately, desperately familiar to most of us, and of course it's the sound of the alarm clock. And what that truly ghastly, awful sound does is stop the single most important behavioral experience that we have, and that's sleep. If you're an average sort of person, 36 percent of your life will be spent asleep, which means that if you live to 90, then 32 years will have been spent entirely asleep.

Now what that 32 years is telling us is that sleep at some level is important. And yet, for most of us, we don't give sleep a second thought. We throw it away. We really just don't think about sleep. And so what I'd like to do today is change your views, change your ideas and your thoughts about sleep. And the journey that I want to take you on, we need to start by going back in time.

"Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber." Any ideas who said that? Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Yes, let me give you a few more quotes. "O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee?" Shakespeare again, from -- I won't say it -- the Scottish play. [Correction: Henry IV, Part 2] (Laughter) From the same time: "Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together." Extremely prophetic, by Thomas Dekker, another Elizabethan dramatist.

But if we jump forward 400 years, the tone about sleep changes somewhat. This is from Thomas Edison, from the beginning of the 20th century. "Sleep is a criminal waste of time and a heritage from our cave days." Bang. (Laughter) And if we also jump into the 1980s, some of you may remember that Margaret Thatcher was reported to have said, "Sleep is for wimps." And of course the infamous -- what was his name? -- the infamous Gordon Gekko from "Wall Street" said, "Money never sleeps."

What do we do in the 20th century about sleep? Well, of course, we use Thomas Edison's light bulb to invade the night, and we occupied the dark, and in the process of this occupation, we've treated sleep as an illness, almost. We've treated it as an enemy. At most now, I suppose, we tolerate the need for sleep, and at worst perhaps many of us think of sleep as an illness that needs some sort of a cure. And our ignorance about sleep is really quite profound.

Why is it? Why do we abandon sleep in our thoughts? Well, it's because you don't do anything much while you're asleep, it seems. You don't eat. You don't drink. And you don't have sex. Well, most of us anyway. And so therefore it's -- Sorry. It's a complete waste of time, right? Wrong. Actually, sleep is an incredibly important part of our biology, and neuroscientists are beginning to explain why it's so very important. So let's move to the brain.

Now, here we have a brain. This is donated by a social scientist, and they said they didn't know what it was, or indeed how to use it, so -- (Laughter) Sorry. So I borrowed it. I don't think they noticed. Okay. (Laughter)

The point I'm trying to make is that when you're asleep, this thing doesn't shut down. In fact, some areas of the brain are actually more active during the sleep state than during the wake state. The other thing that's really important about sleep is that it doesn't arise from a single structure within the brain, but is to some extent a network property, and if we flip the brain on its back -- I love this little bit of spinal cord here -- this bit here is the hypothalamus, and right under there is a whole raft of interesting structures, not least the biological clock. The biological clock tells us when it's good to be up, when it's good to be asleep, and what that structure does is interact with a whole raft of other areas within the hypothalamus, the lateral hypothalamus, the ventrolateral preoptic nuclei. All of those combine, and they send projections down to the brain stem here. The brain stem then projects forward and bathes the cortex, this wonderfully wrinkly bit over here, with neurotransmitters that keep us awake and essentially provide us with our consciousness. So sleep arises from a whole raft of different interactions within the brain, and essentially, sleep is turned on and off as a result of a range of

Okay. So where have we got to? We've said that sleep is complicated and it takes 32 years of our life. But what I haven't explained is what sleep is about. So why do we sleep? And it won't surprise any of you that, of course, the scientists, we don't have a consensus. There are dozens of different ideas about why we sleep, and I'm going to outline three of those.

The first is sort of the restoration idea, and it's somewhat intuitive. Essentially, all the stuff we've burned up during the day, we restore, we replace, we rebuild during the night. And indeed, as an explanation, it goes back to Aristotle, so that's, what, 2,300 years ago. It's gone in and out of fashion. It's fashionable at the moment because what's been shown is that within the brain, a whole raft of genes have been shown to be turned on only during sleep, and those genes are associated with restoration and metabolic pathways. So there's good evidence for the whole restoration hypothesis.

What about energy conservation? Again, perhaps intuitive. You essentially sleep to save calories. Now, when you do the sums, though, it doesn't really pan out. If you compare an individual who has slept at night, or stayed awake and hasn't moved very much, the energy saving of sleeping is about 110 calories a night. Now, that's the equivalent of a hot dog bun. Now, I would say that a hot dog bun is kind of a meager return for such a complicated and demanding behavior as sleep. So I'm less convinced by the energy conservation idea.

But the third idea I'm quite attracted to, which is brain processing and memory consolidation. What we know is that, if after you've tried to learn a task, and you sleep-deprive individuals, the ability to learn that task is smashed. It's really hugely attenuated. So sleep and memory consolidation is also very important. However, it's not just the laying down of memory and recalling it. What's turned out to be really exciting is that our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems is hugely enhanced by a night of sleep. In fact, it's been estimated to give us a threefold advantage. Sleeping at night enhances our creativity. And what seems to be going on is that, in the brain, those neural connections that are important, those synaptic connections that are important, are linked and strengthened, while those that are less important tend to fade away and be less important.

Okay. So we've had three explanations for why we might sleep, and I think the important thing to realize is that the details will vary, and it's probable we sleep for multiple different reasons. But sleep is not an indulgence. It's not some sort of thing that we can take on board rather casually. I think that sleep was once likened to an upgrade from economy to business class, you know, the equiavlent of. It's not even an upgrade from economy to first class. The critical thing to realize is that if you don't sleep, you don't fly. Essentially, you never get there, and what's extraordinary about much of our society these days is that we are desperately sleep-deprived.

So let's now look at sleep deprivation. Huge sectors of society are sleep-deprived, and let's look at our sleep-o-meter. So in the 1950s, good data suggests that most of us were getting around about eight hours of sleep a night. Nowadays, we sleep one and a half to two hours less every night, so we're in the six-and-a-half-hours-every-night league. For teenagers, it's worse, much worse. They need nine hours for full brain performance, and many of them, on a school night, are only getting five hours of sleep. It's simply not enough. If we think about other sectors of society, the aged, if you are aged, then your ability to sleep in a single block is somewhat disrupted, and many sleep, again, less than five hours a night. Shift work. Shift work is extraordinary, perhaps 20 percent of the working population, and the body clock does not shift to the demands of working at night. It's locked onto the same light-dark cycle as the rest of us. So when the poor old shift worker is going home to try and sleep during the day, desperately tired, the body clock is saying, "Wake up. This is the time to be awake." So the quality of sleep that you get as a night shift worker is usually very poor, again in that sort of five-hour region. And then, of course, tens of millions of people suffer from jet lag. So who here has jet lag? Well, my goodness gracious. Well, thank you very much indeed for not falling asleep, because that's what your brain is craving.

One of the things that the brain does is indulge in micro-sleeps, this involuntary falling asleep, and you have essentially no control over it. Now, micro-sleeps can be sort of somewhat embarrassing, but they can also be deadly. It's been estimated that 31 percent of drivers will fall asleep at the wheel at least once in their life, and in the ， the statistics are pretty good: 100,000 accidents on the freeway have been associated with tiredness, loss of vigilance, and falling asleep. A hundred thousand a year. It's extraordinary. At another level of terror, we dip into the tragic accidents at Chernobyl and indeed the space shuttle Challenger, which was so tragically lost. And in the investigations that followed those disasters, poor judgment as a result of extended shift work and loss of vigilance and tiredness was attributed to a big chunk of those disasters.

So when you're tired, and you lack sleep, you have poor memory, you have poor creativity, you have increased impulsiveness, and you have overall poor judgment. But my friends, it's so much worse than that.

(Laughter)

If you are a tired brain, the brain is craving things to wake it up. So drugs, stimulants. Caffeine represents the stimulant of choice across much of the Western world. Much of the day is fueled by caffeine, and if you're a really naughty tired brain, nicotine. And of course, you're fueling the waking state with these stimulants, and then of course it gets to 11 o'clock at night, and the brain says to itself, "Ah, well actually, I need to be asleep fairly shortly. What do we do about that when I'm feeling completely wired?" Well, of course, you then resort to alcohol. Now alcohol, short-term, you know, once or twice, to use to mildly sedate you, can be very useful. It can actually ease the sleep transition. But what you must be so aware of is that alcohol doesn't provide sleep, a biological mimic for sleep. It sedates you. So it actually harms some of the neural proccessing that's going on during memory consolidation and memory recall. So it's a short-term acute measure, but for goodness sake, don't become addicted to alcohol as a way of getting to sleep every night.

Another connection between loss of sleep is weight gain. If you sleep around about five hours or less every night, then you have a 50 percent likelihood of being obese. What's the connection here? Well, sleep loss seems to give rise to the release of the hormone ghrelin, the hunger hormone. Ghrelin is released. It gets to the brain. The brain says, "I need carbohydrates," and what it does is seek out carbohydrates and particularly sugars. So there's a link between tiredness and the metabolic predisposition for weight gain.

Stress. Tired people are massively stressed. And one of the things of stress, of course, is loss of memory, which is what I sort of just then had a little lapse of. But stress is so much more. So if you're acutely stressed, not a great problem, but it's sustained stress associated with sleep loss that's the problem. So sustained stress leads to suppressed immunity, and so tired people tend to have higher rates of overall infection, and there's some very good studies showing that shift workers, for example, have higher rates of cancer. Increased levels of stress throw glucose into the circulation. Glucose becomes a dominant part of the vasculature and essentially you become glucose intolerant. Therefore, diabetes 2. Stress increases cardiovascular disease as a result of raising blood pressure. So there's a whole raft of things associated with sleep loss that are more than just a mildly impaired brain, which is where I think most people think that sleep loss resides.

So at this point in the talk, this is a nice time to think, well, do you think on the whole I'm getting enough sleep? So a quick show of hands. Who feels that they're getting enough sleep here? Oh. Well, that's pretty impressive. Good. We'll talk more about that later, about what are your tips.

So most of us, of course, ask the question, "Well, how do I know whether I'm getting enough sleep?" Well, it's not rocket science. If you need an alarm clock to get you out of bed in the morning, if you are taking a long time to get up, if you need lots of stimulants, if you're grumpy, if you're irritable, if you're told by your work colleagues that you're looking tired and irritable, chances are you are sleep-deprived. Listen to them. Listen to yourself.

What do you do? Well -- and this is slightly offensive -- sleep for dummies: Make your bedroom a haven for sleep. The first critical thing is make it as dark as you possibly can, and also make it slightly cool. Very important. Actually, reduce your amount of light exposure at least half an hour before you go to bed. Light increases levels of alertness and will delay sleep. What's the last thing that most of us do before we go to bed? We stand in a massively lit bathroom looking into the mirror cleaning our teeth. It's the worst thing we can possibly do before we went to sleep. Turn off those mobile phones. Turn off those computers. Turn off all of those things that are also going to excite the brain. Try not to drink caffeine too late in the day, ideally not after lunch. Now, we've set about reducing light exposure before you go to bed, but light exposure in the morning is very good at setting the biological clock to the light-dark cycle. So seek out morning light. Basically, listen to yourself. Wind down. Do those sorts of things that you know are going to ease you off into the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

Okay. That's some facts. What about some myths?

Teenagers are lazy. No. Poor things. They have a biological predisposition to go to bed late and get up late, so give them a break.

We need eight hours of sleep a night. That's an average. Some people need more. Some people need less. And what you need to do is listen to your body. Do you need that much or do you need more? Simple as that.

Old people need less sleep. Not true. The sleep demands of the aged do not go down. Essentially, sleep fragments and becomes less robust, but sleep requirements do not go down.

And the fourth myth is, early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Well that's wrong at so many different levels. (Laughter) There is no, no evidence that getting up early and going to bed early gives you more wealth at all. There's no difference in socioeconomic status. In my experience, the only difference between morning people and evening people is that those people that get up in the morning early are just horribly smug.

(Laughter) (Applause)

Okay. So for the last part, the last few minutes, what I want to do is change gears and talk about some really new, breaking areas of neuroscience, which is the association between mental health, mental illness and sleep disruption. We've known for 130 years that in severe mental illness, there is always, always sleep disruption, but it's been largely ignored. In the 1970s, when people started to think about this again, they said, "Yes, well, of course you have sleep disruption in schizophrenia because they're on anti-psychotics. It's the anti-psychotics causing the sleep problems," ignoring the fact that for a hundred years previously, sleep disruption had been reported before anti-psychotics.

So what's going on? Lots of groups, several groups are studying conditions like depression, schizophrenia and bipolar, and what's going on in terms of sleep disruption. We have a big study which we published last year on schizophrenia, and the data were quite extraordinary. In those individuals with schizophrenia, much of the time, they were awake during the night phase and then they were asleep during the day. Other groups showed no 24-hour patterns whatsoever. Their sleep was absolutely smashed. And some had no ability to regulate their sleep by the light-dark cycle. They were getting up later and later and later and later each night. It was smashed.

So what's going on? And the really exciting news is that mental illness and sleep are not simply associated but they are physically linked within the brain. The neural networks that predispose you to normal sleep, give you normal sleep, and those that give you normal mental health are overlapping. And what's the evidence for that? Well, genes that have been shown to be very important in the generation of normal sleep, when mutated, when changed, also predispose individuals to mental health problems. And last year, we published a study which showed that a gene that's been linked to schizophrenia, which, when mutated, also smashes the sleep. So we have evidence of a genuine mechanistic overlap between these two important systems.

Other work flowed from these studies. The first was that sleep disruption actually precedes certain types of mental illness, and we've shown that in those young individuals who are at high risk of developing bipolar disorder, they already have a sleep abnormality prior to any clinical diagnosis of bipolar. The other bit of data was that sleep disruption may actually exacerbate, make worse the mental illness state. My colleague Dan Freeman has used a range of agents which have stabilized sleep and reduced levels of paranoia in those individuals by 50 percent.

So what have we got? We've got, in these connections, some really exciting things. In terms of the neuroscience, by understanding the neuroscience of these two systems, we're really beginning to understand how both sleep and mental illness are generated and regulated within the brain. The second area is that if we can use sleep and sleep disruption as an early warning signal, then we have the chance of going in. If we know that these individuals are vulnerable, early intervention then becomes possible. And the third, which I think is the most exciting, is that we can think of the sleep centers within the brain as a new therapeutic target. Stabilize sleep in those individuals who are vulnerable, we can certainly make them healthier, but also alleviate some of the appalling symptoms of mental illness.

So let me just finish. What I started by saying is take sleep seriously. Our attitudes toward sleep are so very different from a pre-industrial age, when we were almost wrapped in a duvet. We used to understand intuitively the importance of sleep. And this isn't some sort of crystal-waving nonsense. This is a pragmatic response to good health. If you have good sleep, it increases your concentration, attention, decision-making, creativity, social skills, health. If you get sleep, it reduces your mood changes, your stress, your levels of anger, your impulsivity, and your tendency to drink and take drugs. And we finished by saying that an understanding of the neuroscience of sleep is really informing the way we think about some of the causes of mental illness, and indeed is providing us new ways to treat these incredibly debilitating conditions.

Jim Butcher, the fantasy writer, said, "Sleep is God. Go worship." And I can only recommend that you do the same.

Thank you for your attention.

(Applause)

ted中文演讲稿【第四篇】

尊敬的各位评委、领导、老师，亲爱的同学：大家下午好！

今天学校举行这一次演讲比赛，我有幸被同学们推上来演讲，是我的极大的。荣幸，感谢大家的支持，我相信我一定能做好的。今天我演讲题目是《低碳环保，大家一起来》。

随着社会日益快速发展，我们的环境均受到不同程度的损害，我想大家一定都知道现在的环境被糟蹋成什么样了，新闻报道常出现哪里的环境又被破坏、又被污染，这些都是因为我们这些人类没有做到低碳环保的原因。我们生活水平逐渐提高，导致了很多问题的出现，比如白色污染、空气污染、水污染，这些都是环境污染，也都是我们自己造成的。

生活越过越好，致使我们要求也都提高了，以前对于大自然那么珍惜，现在却一直在向大自然索取，严重的损害了大自然的平衡，所以环境的问题越来越严重，形势越来越严峻，这些都是我们现在就要思考的问题，我们不能不管不顾的。在此我作为一个小学生，更是要注意这问题，因为环境是我们生存的根本，没有这个环境孕育我们，就不会有现在的我们美好的生活，一切都是这个环境赋予我们的财富。我们就更不能忘恩给地球母亲这样的回报。

为了保护我们生存的环境，我们要低碳环保，要解决这些污染，因为都是我们自己造成的。自然苦果由我们自己承受，同时也面临着去解决它。生活中对于白色污染的问题的解决，就是我们不用塑料袋去装东西，尽量用布袋这些能够重复使用的袋子，不用一次性的袋子，塑料袋都不容易分解，很容易造成环境的一个污染。空气之所以被污染，是因为我们之前发电用的是煤炭，煤炭在燃烧的过程会产生大量的一氧化碳和二氧化碳，以及小汽车产生的尾气也是对空气的污染，那我们就用风发电也、用水发电，这些都是环保的方法，尽量少开私家车，使用自行车和坐公交车，这些方式也是对空气环境的一种保护。水污染就是我们尽量要不要排放污水到江河里，做到一水多用。

我相信只要我们大家一起去做，在未来一定可以解决这些问题的，首先就是低碳环保从我们自己做起，团结起来才行，所以我们今后要保持低碳生活、环保生活。

谢谢大家！

经典TED英语演讲稿【第五篇】

01、 Remember to say thank you

Hi. I'm here to talk to you about the importance of praise, admiration and thank you, and having it be specific and genuine.

And the way I got interested in this was, I noticed in myself, when I was growing up, and until about a few years ago, that I would want to say thank you to someone, I would want to praise them, I would want to take in their praise of me and I'd just stop it. And I asked myself, why? I felt shy, I felt embarrassed. And then my question became, am I the only one who does this? So, I decided to investigate.

I'm fortunate enough to work in the rehab facility, so I get to see people who are facing life and death with addiction. And sometimes it comes down to something as simple as, their core wound is their father died without ever saying he's proud of them. But then, they hear from all the family and friends that the father told everybody else that he was proud of him, but he never told the son. It's because he didn't know that his son needed to hear it.

So my question is, why don't we ask for the things that we need? I know a gentleman, married for 25 years, who's longing to hear his wife say, "Thank you for being the breadwinner, so I can stay home with the kids," but won't ask. I know a woman who's good at this. She, once a week, meets with her husband and says, "I'd really like you to thank me for all these things I did in the house and with the kids." And he goes, "Oh, this is great, this is great." And praise really does have to be genuine, but she takes responsibility for that. And a friend of mine, April, who I've had since kindergarten, she thanks her children for doing their chores. And she said, "

But before I show you what’s inside,

I will tell you that’s going to do incredible things for you 。

It will bring all of your family together.

You will feel loved and appreciated like never before.

And reconnect to friends and acquaintances you haven’t heard from in years.

Adoration and admiration will overwhelm you.

It will recalibrate what’s important in your life.

It will redefine your sense of spirituality and faith.

You’ll have a new understanding and trust in your body.

You’ll have unsurpassed vitality and energy.

You’ll expand your vocabulary, meet new people, and you’ll have a healthier lifestyle. And get this, you’ll have an eight-week vacation of doing absolutely nothing.

You’ll eat countless gourmet meals.

Flowers will arrive by the truck load.

People will say to you: “you look great! Have you had any work done?”

And you’ll have a life-time supply of good drugs.

You’ll be challenged, inspired, motivated and humbled.

Your life will have new meaning: peace, health, serenity, happiness, nirvana.

The price?

Fifty-five thousand dollars.

And that’s an incredible deal.

By now, I know you’re dying to know what it is and where you can get one.

Does Amazon carry it?

Dose it have the Apple logo on it?

Is there a waiting list?

Not likely.

This gift came to me about five months ago.

And looked more like this when it was all wrapped up.

Not quite so pretty.

And this.

And then this.

It was a rare jam.

A brain tumor.

Hemangioblastoma.

The gift that keeps on giving.

And while I’m ok now.

I wouldn’t wish this gift for you.

I’m not sure you’d want it.

But I would’t change my experience.

It profoundly altered my life in ways it didn’t expect.

In all the ways I just shared with you.

So the next time you are faced with something that’s unexpected, unwanted and uncertain. Consider that it just may be a gift.