Being with your dog makes you feel good, and Dr. Sandra Barker is trying to find out why. Dr. Barker, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Human- Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University, studies what happens inside our bodies when we interact with dogs.

　　和你的狗待在一起会让你感到舒适，不过桑德拉·巴克博士要究其所以然。巴克博士是弗吉尼亚联邦大学人与动物交互中心的精神病学教授及主任，她在研究我们在和狗互动交流时，我们体内的变化。

　　Sandra Barker: We’re trying to find out what’s really physically going on, is there a physiological benefit that folks are getting? No one’s ever looked at the brain waves before with human-animal interaction.

　　桑德拉·巴克：我们正努力找出此时人在身体上会有什么变化。在生理上人们会从中得到益处吗？以前从没有人就人与动物的互动来观察人类的脑电波。

　　Barker talked about her 2009 study, in which people’s brain waves were tested before and after spending time with a dog.

　　巴克谈到了她在2009 年的研究。在研究中，被测者会与一只狗待一段时间，在与狗相处之前和之后，他们的脑电波都会被检测。

　　Barker: We saw an increase in those brain waves – the theta frequency and the alpha frequency… significant increase, and those are the frequency bands and the activity that we would expect to see associated with relaxation.

　　巴克：我们可以看到他们脑电波中的 θ 波和α 波增强了，这种增强十分值得注意，因为那些波段和那种波形活动都与身体的放松相关。

　　Dr. Barker’s team also measured a decrease in cortisol1 – the human stress hormone – after her subjects interacted with a dog.

　　在被测者与狗相处后，巴克博士的团队同时还测量出其“压力荷尔蒙” 皮质醇减少了。

　　Dr. Barker believes that much larger scale studies are needed to find out more about how animals – like therapy dogs2 – can make an impact in a clinical setting.

　　巴克博士认为，我们还需要对动物——比如医疗犬——在临床上如何能对患者产生影响进行大量的研究以了解更多信息。

Vocabulary:

　　 1. cortisoln . 皮质醇。皮质醇是一种由肾上腺分泌的荷尔蒙，在应付压力中扮演重要角色，故又被称为“压力荷尔蒙”。

　　2. 医疗犬是经过训练的、可以让有学习困难或精神压力过大等问题的人感受到关爱和安慰的犬，一般会被安置在医院、养老院及学校等处。