Luyện nói tiếng Anh bằng Shadowing qua video: Biggest Breakthroughs in Biology and Neuroscience: 2025

Chọn chế độ luyện tập

Mỗi chế độ mở một phòng luyện tập toàn màn hình.

159 câu

Nếu các câu quá ngắn hoặc quá dài, hãy bấm Edit để chỉnh sửa.

For millennia, we humans have set ourselves apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, pointing to cognitive abilities that we alone possess.

Like the use of tools.

Or planning and problem solving.

But over the last half century, this perception has changed.

Of course it has been observed that other animals have interesting and sophisticated mental lives as well, and in particular birds among vertebrates.

This is something that goes beyond just simple reflexive behaviors.

And there are many different bird species which are very clever, quite intelligent.

In many aspects and in many tasks, they can be comparable to children, to kids up to seven years old.

So is bird intelligence just a less evolved form of human intelligence?

Or is it something else entirely different?

Now, a trio of recent papers published in the journal Science have revealed an intriguing answer.

For the longest time, we thought the neocortex is like the structure you need to be intelligent.

Until the middle of the 20th century, many neuroanatomists assumed that birds couldn't be all that smart.

Because they do not have the structure that we use in our brains to become intelligent.

Avian brains lack anything resembling a neocortex, the layered and highly-ordered outermost structure in humans and other animals where communication and higher reasoning reside.

We needed to conciliate these two ideas that birds, in many cases are very intelligent, but they do not have that neocortex.

However, birds do have something called the dorsal ventricular ridge or DVR.

These are a huge mass of neurons.

Neurons in birds are very small and they are packed.

The density of neurons is high.

Very, very high, much higher than in any mammalian species.

In the 1960s, the neuroanatomist Harvey Karten observed a functional similarity between the mammalian neocortex and the avian DVR.

Karten postulated that neural circuits of the DVR are homologous, so have a common origin.

But decades later, anatomist Luis Puelles drew a different conclusion.

He found that the two structures, the neocortex and the DVR, develop in different parts of a sub-region of the brain called the pallium.

Which is the most anterior region of the of the developing vertebrate brain that looks like a hood, like a cup on top of the rest of the brain.

So the question remained...

did these brain structures, the seats of vertebrate intelligence, share the same origins, or did they evolve independently?

The only way to reconcile these different views on brain evolution is to look at circuitry and development and cell-type identity all together.

And this is what these studies have achieved collectively.

In 2025, a collaboration of international researchers released the results.

Using a combination of powerful molecular techniques.

The teams were able to answer the question at the cellular level.

We generated a cell type atlas of the avian pallium.

Then used this to compare to similar data from mammals.

And this way we could basically find out whether certain cell types actually are homologous, meaning they were present in the last common ancestor, or did they evolve independently in the two lineages?

Evidence suggests that birds and mammals last shared a common ancestor 320 million years ago, an ancient relative akin to a modern day lizard.

What we found, the developmental programs giving rise to these different circuits is not the same.

Therefore, they evolved separately.

In the mammalian neocortex and in the bird DVR, they actually started out from different cell types in the last common ancestors. In the last common ancestor, one was like in the dorsal region, one was in the ventral region.

And then over the course of evolutionary time, those cell types became similar.

And the research has revealed a more universal force of nature at work, a phenomenon known as convergent evolution.

The circuits are strongly similar, but they are not developing in the same area and they are not using the same neurons.

Evolution found the same solution using different tools.

This is a case of convergent evolution, and there are many, many cases of, convergent evolution.

Other examples of convergent evolution include unique forms of winged flight in birds and bats.

Or the evolution of camera-like eyes in both octopuses and mammals.

This is a convergence of intelligence.

Evolution found two ways to make animals intelligent, birds and mammals.

And they found it following two different evolutionary trajectories.

All these pieces together paint a different picture than what both Karten and Puelles, and you know, their colleagues in the schools of schools of thought have been painting.

I think they tell us that this is a more complex story, but also that the debate is largely settled, I will say.

In the conventional story of conception, a sperm's mission is simple - deliver the father's share of his genes to the egg.

All dad is really needed for is to just be a carrier of the paternal copy, so one half of the DNA, so one half of the genome.

But it turns out, this story about a sperm's role in inheritance may be more complex.

Environmental stressors can somehow leave a mark on the sperm and transmit traits from the father to the offspring.

And in the traditional sense, this is not possible because the DNA should be read only.

New research in mice has revealed that molecular records of a father's lifestyle can hitchhike along, producing similar traits or phenotypes in the next generation.

This has been demonstrated for examples of diet, stress, exercise, and so almost a completely new layer on heredity.

This is an independent code, beyond the DNA sequences alone.

In adult males, a sperm's journey begins in the testes, where reproductive cells divide and mature.

The sperm is constantly being made anew.

Half of the father's genes are packed tightly inside the head of each sperm.

In the 1880s, German biologist Auguste Weissmann wrote a treatise backed by experiments on mice that concluded a barrier exists between the heritable reproductive cells and the rest of the body.

There must be something blocking the environments or exposures.

This was named the so-called 'Weismann Barrier.' And really that was kind of dogma for really almost 100 years.

However, over the last two decades, a growing body of evidence has shown that this barrier, in fact, can be breached.

A father's diet, stress, exposure to toxins, including drugs and alcohol, have been shown to impact offspring.

And so really one of the landmark papers that was published in 2010 from Oli Rando's lab demonstrated that if you feed male mice different diets, you can get different metabolic phenotypes in the progeny that are associated with those diets that dads ate.

But until very recently, potential mechanisms for how these traits might be transmitted have remained up for debate.

One leading candidate is RNA, single-stranded nucleotide sequences that perform an array of biological roles, from building proteins to regulating cell function by turning certain genes on or off.

Small regulatory RNAs have the ability to regulate gene expression at many different levels.

RNA have also been found in the part of the reproductive system.

Where sperm mature, packaged inside what's called extracellular vesicles.

And we know this extracellular vesicles, they carry DNA.

They carry RNA. They carry proteins.

They can indeed transmit information.

In theory, RNA produced by a father's environmental exposures travel in the bloodstream and fill these extracellular vesicles, which then fuse with the sperm to deliver their molecular messages to the awaiting egg.

And the idea would be that these are delivered during fertilization.

So to change how early embryonic gene expression occurs and then leads to changes in development and phenotypes.

In November 2025, Chinese researchers published a study on exercise that provides the strongest evidence yet of RNA's role in transmitting heritable phenotypes.

This paper also really goes a long ways to show that its RNA and sperm.

They show it many different times.

The team trained father mice on a treadmill for two weeks and bred them with sedentary females.

They found that the male offspring were also more physically fit.

I think one of the most exciting part is that this example is is deeply adaptive.

It's just just like, that the father is sending a message to the environment is tough.

You have to be a tough to survive.

So how could this trait be passed down?

The researchers identified a specific set of microRNAs in both the sperm and the fertilized egg, which are connected to the regulation of genes that increase metabolism and muscle function in adults.

This is cool, because to me it's really the first mechanistic link of something very early actually being sufficient for the phenotype later.

However, despite the significant new evidence presented by the exercise study, many molecular mysteries remain.

We have to define the mechanism of what's going on, what is going on after fertilization?

What are these RNAs and sperm doing after fertilization to change early development?

They're impacting gene expression.

Although not confirmed in humans, the new research may be reason enough for potential fathers to think twice about their lifestyle choices.

We do not know in full how it works, but there are so many evidence tell us this can have an effect.

So why not?

As a father to be, you should probably be as healthy as possible.

100

Right? And I mean, I'm kind of a newish father and like yeah, that's definitely the case.

101

Whether you know these choices, right?

102

Your environmental exposures or your kind of behavioral choices impact your progeny adversely, I think it's still debatable.

103

What do ancient enzymes, squid shapes, and European languages have in common?

104

These three systems - the biomolecular, the morphological, and the linguistic.

105

These different granularities of life might be connected through some frameworks.

106

In 2025, a young researcher published a new mathematical model that describes similar spikes in the evolutionary histories of these very different systems.

107

We're looking at a rapid transition in the evolution, not something which happens gradually.

108

This work bolsters a long-controversial theory known as 'punctuated equilibrium', which posits that new species are formed during relatively sudden bursts rather than through gradual change over time.

109

I have been fighting for this stuff for 50 years.

110

The explosive evolution is being found all over the place.

111

For the last century and a half, Charles Darwin's writings on evolution have loomed large.

112

The message that was left by Darwin was a gradual change through time.

113

And that's inevitable given the mechanisms of natural selection that he formulated.

114

Natural selection occurs when organisms accumulate random genetic mutations, leading to variation in traits across a population.

115

Changes just build up gradually over time, they accumulate.

116

Some of those traits may provide individuals a survival advantage, which can eventually lead to the splitting of lineages.

117

But in 1970, paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould had a new idea.

118

In the fossil record, they rarely saw the kinds of intermediate species they would expect from gradual evolution.

119

To describe this phenomena, Gould coined the term 'punctuated equilibrium.' Really is so graphic about what it is.

120

The equilibria refers to the great stability that you mostly encounter if you just randomly sample things.

121

They're the same as they were yesterday and will be for another million years type a thing.

122

But every once in a while there's an event.

123

New species suddenly appear at the nodes of the evolutionary tree, where one lineage branches off from the others.

124

And so you've got two things that now differ from one another quite a bit, but there's no sort of gradual change from the ancestor to the descendants.

125

It seems to have happened rapidly. Bam!

126

It's almost like it's instantaneous.

127

Evolutionary biologist Jordan Douglas didn't set out to examine punctuated equilibrium.

128

The project I was working on was, how did life learn the rules to compute its own molecular synthesis?

129

Douglas was analyzing enzymes called aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase, which are essential to building proteins.

130

Forms of these enzymes have existed since the emergence of life on earth, nearly 4 billion years ago.

131

They come in families and so we were interested in how those families evolved.

132

But as I was studying the system, I started to realize that if we're going to model this appropriately, computationally, we need the right kind of methods behind it.

133

So Douglas used computational tools and Bayesian analysis to construct phylogenetic family trees of the enzymes in his database.

134

With these trees describing the relationships between these entities.

135

The lengths of the branches are describing the time that these things have been apart from one another.

136

In his model, Douglas saw evolutionary spikes of rapid separation at the nodes, or branch points, where enzyme families splits.

137

What we call 'saltative branching.' Saltative comes from the Latin word for leap.

138

So it's like a leaping branch.

139

Saltative branching is followed by rapid, independent evolution of the new branches.

140

You have an unusual mutation which changes a whole lot of things, doesn't destroy the system, but then the other parts of the system quickly readjust.

141

And after this burst of evolution, the system stabilizes.

142

The model also revealed branches that evolved and went extinct.

143

Eventhough they're gone now, the fact that they used to exist has still left behind some sort of footprint on the lineages that have survived.

144

Douglas' model successfully described the evolution of his enzyme.

145

But he wondered, what might it reveal in datasets from other systems?

146

So we tested this on 13 different biological systems.

147

We were not entirely sure what to expect.

148

We looked at cephalopods, for example octopuses, squids, cuttlefish, etc..

149

The model predicted the sudden bursts in the change of body shapes found in the evolutionary history of these cephalopods.

150

Surprisingly, Douglas' model also predicted evolutionary spikes in the family tree of Indo-European languages.

151

The more datasets we started playing with, the more we realized, okay, this process must be happening quite often.

152

Saltative branching seemed to be everywhere, but it may not represent the entirety of the evolutionary story.

153

What we really need is to test this on more datasets.

154

Just kind of figure out how often is this process occurring, but also what proportion of total change can be explained by this process?

155

And what proportion is explained by gradualism?

156

For Eldridge, Jordan's model was a welcome validation.

157

This is fantastic, you know.

158

So that was my feeling when I saw the paper.

159

I said, I think this is really basically a tipping point.

Tải Ứng Dụng

Mọi thứ bạn cần để nói trôi chảy

Chấm điểm AIChấm từng câu nói

Luyện IPAThành thạo mọi âm

Từ vựngMở rộng vốn từ

Game Từ vựngHọc qua chơi

Quét QR

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

FOR YOU

Video gợi ý

48 câu

Từ vựng và ghi chú luyện nói cho bài học này

Bài luyện nói trình độ C1 này dựa trên video “Biggest Breakthroughs in Biology and Neuroscience: 2025”. Video này có 159 câu và 2423 từ để luyện shadowing. Phần lời nói dài 15:35. Người nói nói với tốc độ tự nhiên, khoảng 155 từ mỗi phút, gần với hội thoại hằng ngày. Chỉ 76% số từ nằm trong 3.000 từ tiếng Anh thông dụng nhất, nên từ vựng khá khó.

Từ vựng quan trọng trong video

15 từ khó nhất trong video, kèm phiên âm và nghĩa:

Từ	Phiên âm	Nghĩa
evolutionary tính từ	/ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/	tiến hóa
enzyme danh từ	/ˈɛn.zaɪm/	enzim, men tiêu hoá
ancestor danh từ	/ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/	tổ tiên
trait danh từ	/tɹeɪt/	đặc điểm, đặc tính
mammal danh từ	/ˈmæməl/	động vật có vú, thú
neuron danh từ	/ˈn(j)ʊɹɑn/	tế bào thần kinh, nơ-ron
phenotype danh từ	/ˈfiː.nəˌtaɪp/	kiểu hình
researcher danh từ	/ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/	nhà nghiên cứu
extracellular tính từ		ngoại bào
vesicle danh từ	/ˈvɛsɪkəl/	túi, bọng
equilibrium danh từ	/ɛkwɪˈlɪbɹɪəm/	cân bằng
octopus danh từ	/ˈɑktəpʊs/	bạch tuộc
vertebrate danh từ	/ˈvɛɹ.tɪ.bɹeɪt/	động vật có xương sống
node danh từ	/noʊd/	gióng
observe động từ	/əbˈzɜːv/	quan sát

Ngữ pháp trong video

Những cấu trúc người nói dùng nhiều nhất, kèm đúng cụm từ trong video:

Cấu trúc	Trong video
Thì hiện tại hoàn thành tiếp diễn have/has been + -ing — việc bắt đầu từ trước và vẫn đang tiếp tục	have been painting · have been fighting
Thì hiện tại hoàn thành have/has + quá khứ phân từ — việc đã xảy ra nhưng còn liên quan đến hiện tại	have set · has changed · has been observed
Câu bị động be + quá khứ phân từ — nhấn vào việc xảy ra, không phải người làm	has been observed · is largely settled · is really needed
Mệnh đề quan hệ who / which + mệnh đề — thêm thông tin về người hoặc vật	species which are · egg, which are · advantage, which can

Phát âm cần chú ý

Người nói dùng 10 dạng rút gọn, ví dụ they're, we're, couldn't. Hãy nói theo dạng ngắn đúng như bạn nghe.

Âm “th”: synthesis /ˈsɪnθəsɪs/, mathematical /ˌmæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/
Âm “sh” và “zh”: evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, conception /kənˈsɛpʃən/, variation /ˌvɛəɹiˈeɪʃn̩/
Từ dài — đặt trọng âm cho đúng: evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, equilibrium /ɛkwɪˈlɪbɹɪəm/, reproductive /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌktɪv/, accumulate /əˈkjuːmjʊˌleɪt/, biologist /baɪˈɒləd͡ʒɪst/

Cách luyện với video này

Nghe hết video một lần, chưa cần nói, và ghi lại những từ bạn chưa biết.
Bắt đầu ở tốc độ 0,75×, nói đuổi từng câu, rồi quay lại tốc độ bình thường khi đã quen.
Ghi âm giọng mình rồi so với bản gốc, chú ý các từ như evolutionary, enzyme, ancestor.

Phương Pháp Shadowing Là Gì?

Shadowing là kỹ thuật học ngôn ngữ có cơ sở khoa học, ban đầu được phát triển cho chương trình đào tạo phiên dịch viên chuyên nghiệp và được phổ biến rộng rãi bởi nhà đa ngôn ngữ học Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Nguyên lý cốt lõi đơn giản nhưng cực kỳ hiệu quả: bạn nghe tiếng Anh của người bản xứ và lặp lại to ngay lập tức — như một "cái bóng" (shadow) đuổi theo người nói với độ trễ chỉ 1–2 giây. Khác với luyện ngữ pháp hay học từ vựng bị động, Shadowing buộc não bộ và cơ miệng phải đồng thời xử lý và tái tạo ngôn ngữ thực tế. Các nghiên cứu khoa học xác nhận phương pháp này cải thiện đáng kể phát âm, ngữ điệu, nhịp điệu, nối âm, kỹ năng nghe và độ lưu loát khi nói — đặc biệt hiệu quả cho người luyện IELTS Speaking và muốn giao tiếp tiếng Anh tự nhiên như người bản ngữ.

Phương pháp shadowing: đọc hướng dẫn từng bước đầy đủ →

Luyện nói tiếng Anh bằng Shadowing qua video: Biggest Breakthroughs in Biology and Neuroscience: 2025

Chọn chế độ luyện tập

Tải Ứng Dụng

Why birds don't crash (and what humans can learn from them)

Our Brains Are Not Special. But Why Are We?

Embryology of the Nervous System

44 Audio Track

World’s Most Advanced Artificial Egg Hatches Chicks

تطور العين

We Won’t Explore the Galaxy...

The 600 Million Year Story of the Human Brain | FULL DOCUMENTARY

Steven Pinker: Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain | Big Think

The Neuroscience of Creativity

Why is walking humans’ superpower? – C1 English Listening Test

We're Not Ready for Biocomputing