A Horse's World

一句话：神经科学家兼马术训练师 Janet Jones 的新书，把她训练与研究马匹的第一手经验整理成书，探讨马如何感知世界、记忆信息、表达情感——书中的实验数据构成了 NPR Short Wave 本期访谈的核心论据。

简介

主持人 Emily Kwong 开场即评价这本书"there just aren't that many books like it"（同类书很少见）。书中至少两组数据被本集直接引用：一是马的面部表情组合可达 355 万亿种（"horses have more than 355 trillion different facial expressions"），暗示马可能拥有比过去认为的更丰富的情感层次；二是一项让马学会几何图形识别规则的实验——十年后研究者回访其中一匹马，识别原图形的准确率仍达 100%。全书围绕"马的认知方式与人类有本质不同"这一核心论点展开，尤其强调马缺乏人类式的自动"范畴知觉"（categorical perception）。

推荐理由

Jones 本人是本集受访嘉宾，她的研究与训练经验是节目全部核心发现的直接来源。她用自己的马 True 举例说明马为何会对已经见过的物体重新表现出恐惧，并解释背后的物种逻辑：

"Sort of. That's sort of it, exactly. And you can need that because they're prey animals. They're in danger from any unknown object. We aren't."

谈到范畴知觉在人类身上催生偏见的代价时，她说：

"Our brains sort items or people into group membership automatically, without our control, without our permission, often without our realization."

Kwong 读到人马长期记忆对照实验时感叹："Another fact I learned from your book is that horses have more than 355 trillion different facial expressions."（原话虽紧跟在记忆话题之后，但引用的是书中面部表情数据这一节）。书中对人马神经活动共享机制的描述也被节目视为最令人惊讶的发现之一，Jones 如此解释：

"When a rider presses the calf of her left leg into a horse's side, the horse's skin receptors pick that up and send neural impulses up the spinal cord to the brain, to the horse's brain... this creates a kind of loop in which horse and rider are sharing neural activation back and forth in real time... it's between a prey species and a predator species. Horses and humans are the only cross-species that fall into that category, that work at that level."

出处

NPR Short Wave 马的心智 集，Janet Jones 访谈全程；355 万亿种面部表情组合、十年后 100% 图形识别准确率等数据均标注"据 Jones《A Horse's World》一书"。节目结尾 Kwong 正式介绍此书："Janet Jones is the author of the new book A Horse's World, which is out now. Thank you so much for talking to us on Short Wave."