287. The caudate helps us detect and perceive a reward, discriminate between rewards, prefer a particular reward, anticipate a reward, and expect a reward. It produces motivation to acquire a reward and plans specific movements to obtain a reward. The caudate is also associated with the acts of paying attention and learning. 

Caudate nucleus 尾状核

伏隔核(Nucleus accumbens)

纹状体(Striatum)

288. In other words, love isn't separate from everyday life. It is a member of a larger family of desires. Love is not an emotion like happiness or sadness. Love is a motivational state, which leads to various emotions ranging from euphoria to misery. A person in love is in a state of need. 

euphoria 欣快; 精神欢快; 幸福感; [juˈfɔriə]

289. The mental system is geared more toward predicting rewards than in the rewards themselves. The mind creates predictive models all day long. when one of the models accurately anticipates reality, then the mind experiences a little surge of reward, or at least a reassuring feeling of tranquility. When the model contradicts reality, then there's tension and concern. 

tranquility 安宁;平静;安静;平稳

290 The main business of the brain is modeling. We are continually constructing little anticipatory patterns in our brain to help us predict the future: If I do something, something will happen. 

291. This function is one the fundamental structures of desire. As we go through our days, the mind generates anticipatory patterns, based on the working models stored inside it. Often there's tension between the inner models and the outer world. So we try to come up with concepts that will help us understand the world, or changes in behavior that will help us live in harmony with it. When we grasp some situation, or master some task, there's surge of pleasure. 

292. This yearning for harmony, or limerence, can manifest itself in small mundane ways. People experience a small spark of pleasure when they solve a crossword puzzle. The desire for limerence propels us intellectually. We all like to be told how right we are. We all feel a surge of pleasure when some clarifying theory clicks into place. 

propel 推动;推进;驱使;驱动

clarifying 说明;使清楚，澄清

293. The desire for limerence is at its most profound during those transcendent moments when people feel themselves fused with nature and with God, when the soul lifts up and a feeling of oneness with the universe pervades their being. 

pervade  遍及，弥漫; 渗透，充满

294. There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just a step in the process of learning. 

295. The human mind is an overconfidence machine. The conscious level gives itself credit for things it really didn't do and confabulates tales to create illusion it controls things it really doesn't determine. 

Give sb. credit for sth.为...赞扬[肯定]某人

 give credit to someone 归功于某人

confabulate 虚构

296. Certain sphere of life, like the stock market, are too complex and too random to be able to predict near-term events with any certainty. 

297. Daneil Gilbert of Harvard argues that we have psychological immune system that exaggerates information that confirms our good qualities and ignores information that casts doubt upon them. 

298. In classical Greece and Rome, according to this narrative, the party of reason made great strides. But after the fall of Rome, the passions reasserted themselves. Europe fell into the Dark Ages. Education suffered, science lay dormant, superstition flourished. Things began to pick up again during the Renaissance ['renəsɑ:ns] with the developments in science and accounting. Then during the seventeenth century, scientists and technologists created new forms of machinery and new ways to think about society. 

make great stride in sth 在某方面取得巨大进步

reassert itself 重新发挥作用 

dormant 休眠的;静止的

299. Great investigators began to dissect and understand their world. The metaphor " the world is a machine", began to replace the metaphor, "the world is a living organism". Society was often seen as a clock with millions of moving pieces, and God was the Divine Clock-maker, the author of an exquisitely rational universe. 

dissect 解剖;仔细分析

200. The rationalist tradition proved seductive. It promised certainty to relieve people of the anxiety caused by fuzziness and doubt.