人为什么会做梦？“解梦”真的可靠吗？ | 比蓝双语

Photo credit: Getty Images

“The short answer is that we don’t know why we sleep,” admits Yuval Nir, who runs a sleep laboratory at Tel Aviv University. “It is not what the public wants to hear but as a scientist I have to say it.”

“简短的回答是我们不知道我们为什么睡觉，”特拉维夫大学(Tel Aviv University)睡眠实验室主管尤瓦尔•尼尔(Yuval Nir)表示，“这不是公众希望听到的，但作为科学家我不得不这么说。”

Photo credit: Getty Images

We do know that without it we would suffer the consequences. All animals with nervous systems sleep. Sleep deprivation causes disease and in extreme cases may be fatal.

我们确实知道，如果没有睡眠，我们会遭受不好的后果。有神经系统的所有动物都睡觉。剥夺睡眠会导致疾病，在极端情况下可能是致命的。

Dreaming is more ofa mystery, says Nir. “And dreams feed into even bigger questions, such as why we are conscious and why we experience anything at all, which science has not begun to answer.”

尼尔表示，做梦更是一个谜。“而且梦衍生出更大的问题，例如我们为什么有意识，我们为什么会有任何体验，科学还没有开始回答这些问题。”

② deprivation [deprɪ'veɪʃ(ə)n] n. 剥夺；丧失；贫困

例句：Critics say the cold warriors are suffering from a bad case of "enemy-deprivation syndrome". 批评人士说，冷战分子们是患了一种恶性的“敌人缺失综合症”。

Photo credit: Getty Images

2

The desire to understand our dreams is as old as dreams themselves. In ancient times, many leaders saw immense significance in their content, using it to guide their decision-making. Religions have sought divine revelations in dreams.

“解梦”的愿望与梦本身一样古老。在古代，很多领袖看到了梦境内容的巨大重要性，用它来指导决策。宗教一直在梦境中寻找圣贤的启示。

Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysts see dreams as an important window into the mind; the symbolic dream images that Carl Jung listed in the early 20th century are still used by practitionerstoday.

心理分析学家弗洛伊德(Freudian)和荣格(Jungian)把梦视为思想的重要窗户；卡尔•荣格(Carl Jung)在20世纪初列出的象征性梦境图像仍然被当今的从业者使用。

③ revelation [revə'leɪʃ(ə)n] n. （上帝的）启示；披露；被曝光的秘闻

例句：He said it was a "red herring" to try now and claim that this was some shocking new revelation. 他说，现在试图把这些东西称作令人震惊的新发现，这是在转移人们的视线。

④ practitioner [præk'tɪʃ(ə)nə] n.（尤指医学或法律界的）从业人员；习艺者；专门人才

例句：Keynes saw that market efficiency, in a practitioner's sense, might be a force for economic instability. 凯恩斯认为，以从业者角度来看，市场效率或许是导致经济不稳定的一个因素。

Photo credit: Getty Images

At the other extreme, some researchers see dreaming as a meaningless “epiphenomenon” — an incidental byproduct of the neural information processing that takes place during sleep. In this view, dreams are no more useful than the waste heat emitted by a lightbulb whose sole purpose is to illuminate.

在另一个极端，一些研究人员把做梦视为毫无意义的“附带现象”，是在睡眠期间发生的神经信息处理的意外副产品。根据这种观点，梦与灯泡发光时发出的热量一样毫无用处，灯泡的唯一功用是发光。

But most sleep scientists believe that the emotions and narratives conjured up in our dreams do have a function beyond the neural data-­processing that produces them. “There are good sets of evidence to support two functional benefits of dreaming,” says Walker. “One is problem solving and creativity. The other is emotional therapy.”

但多数睡眠科学家认为，梦中出现的情绪和叙事确实具备一种在产生这些情绪的神经数据处理以外的功能。“有很多证据支持梦的两个功能性好处，”加州大学伯克利分校的沃克表示，“一个是解决问题和创造性。另一个是情绪治疗。”

⑤ conjure up 想起；用魔法召唤

例句：Future and past thus conjure up a spectacle in which self-righteous morality is linked with political might. 未来与过去由此交织出一幅自以为是的道德观与政治实力联系在一起的景象。

Photo credit: Getty Images

One type of experiment, pioneered by Harvard University, sets volunteers a difficult problem, such as solving a virtual-reality puzzle, and then lets them sleep before tackling it. Participants who report dreams related to the puzzle achieve better results than those who do not. There is also evidence that dreaming helps people to resolve painful emotional experiences.

哈佛大学(Harvard University)首创的一类实验给志愿者提出一个难题，例如解决一个虚拟现实难题，然后让他们在解决问题前睡一觉。报告做梦与难题相关的参与者，取得了比没有做这种梦的人更好的结果。还有证据显示，做梦会帮助人们化解痛苦的情绪体验。

Photo credit: Getty Images

Dreams may remain mysterious, but plausible answers are emerging about some of our multiple biological reasons for sleeping.

梦可能仍是一个谜，但对于睡眠的一些生理原因，可信的答案正在出现。

The ancient origins of sleep lie in the circadian pattern of activity and rest that governs most forms of life on earth. The profound changes in light, temperature and food availability that take place over 24 hours led species to evolve features specialised for optimal performance under either diurnal or nocturnal conditions, but not both.

睡眠的古老源头在于活动与休息的昼夜节奏模式，它控制着地球上的多数生命形式。24小时内出现的光照、温度和食物可获得性的深刻变化，让物种进化为两类：一类在日间表现最优，另一类在夜间表现最优。

⑥ plausible ['plɔːzɪb(ə)l] adj. 有道理的；可信的；巧言令色的

例句：None of these sounds plausible to me as explanations for the extreme house price increases we have observed. 对我而言，所有这些似乎都不能解释我们所看到的房价极端走势。

⑦ circadian [sɜː'keɪdɪən] adj.（每 24 小时人或动物体内变化）昼夜节律的

例句：While generally the light-driven circadian rhythm is in charge, the mealtime clock takes over when food is scarce. 当食物短缺时，“进食钟”会取代由光线决定的昼夜生理节奏来控制身体。

⑧ diurnal [daɪ'ɜːn(ə)l] adj. 昼行性的，每日的 n. 日记

例句：As the light fades at the end of the day, diurnal raptors like the golden eagle give up the hunt. 天色渐渐昏暗，金雕这样白天猎食的猛禽便终止猎食。

Photo credit: Getty Images

As animals evolved to move around during the day, feeding andprocreating, natural selection simultaneously favoured night-time inactivity to keep them out of the way of predators,pathogens and accidental injury. Conversely, nocturnal creatures developed an urge to rest out of harm’s way in daytime conditions.

随着动物进化为在白天四处活动、进食和生育，自然选择同时倾向于让它们在夜间不活动，以避免受到天敌、病原体和意外伤害的侵害。相反，夜行动物在进化过程中形成了在日间休息以避免吃亏的本能。

Once a circadian cycle had been established, evolution drove further specialisation, so that essential biological housekeeping functions take place during the animal’s downtime, when the brain is not swamped with incoming sensory information and the body is not devoted to energy-intensive activity.

一旦形成了一个昼夜周期，进化就推动了进一步分工，使得基本的生物管家功能发生在动物的休息时段——这时大脑没有被输入的感官信息淹没，身体也没有投入到能量密集型活动。

⑨ procreate ['prəʊkrɪeɪt] vt. 生育；繁殖

例句：For any living creature, the evolutionary game involves obtaining resources to live long enough to procreate and rear its young. 任何生物在进化过程中都需要获得资源，让自己生存得足够长，以便繁育后代。

⑩ predator ['predətə] n. 掠夺者；捕食性动物；弱肉强食的人（或机构）

例句：As robots like predator drones replace cops and soldiers, fewer people may have to put their lives at risk. 随着和捕食者无人机这样的机器人取代警察和士兵，要冒着生命危险的人数会越少。

⑪ pathogen ['pæθədʒ(ə)n] n. 病原体；致病菌

例句：Moreover, the surveillance rate of pathogen and toxicosis were lower and there was no early-warning ability in public health emergency. 对病原生物和中毒的检测能力较低；对各类突发公共卫生事件没有预警能力。

⑫ swamp [swɒmp] vt. 淹没；使不堪承受 n. 沼泽

例句：Harper says: "We have been swamped by pre-nups. The number we have done has trebled over the last couple of years. " 哈珀表示：“我们都被婚前协议淹没了，过去几年我们处理的数量上升了三倍。”

Photo credit: Getty Images

3

All animals have a powerful drive to sleep, which eventually becomes irresistible.

所有动物都有强大的睡眠驱动力，这种驱动力最终是不可抗拒的。

The verified record for staying awake without stimulants is held by Randy Gardner, a Californian high-school student who fended off sleep for just over 11 days in 1964, closely monitored by scientists. Such an experiment would be regarded as unethical today, because of the known risk to health of extreme sleep deprivation.

而得到证实的无刺激情况下清醒时间纪录保持者是加州高中生兰迪•加德纳(Randy Gardner)——1964年，在科学家们的密切监测下，他在11天多一点时间里没有睡眠。此类实验在今天将被认为是不道德的，因为极度缺乏睡眠具有已知的健康风险。

⑬ fend off 挡开；避开(灾祸等)

例句：It was the second time in less than a week that the bank has had to fend off negative publicity. 这是该行在不到一周内第二次必须应对负面消息。

Photo credit: Getty Images

Two very different housekeeping functions are known to operate in the sleeping brain. The more prosaic — discovered in 2012 at the University of Rochester in the US — is a waste-disposal mechanism that clears the brain of toxic proteins and other cellular rubbish arising from cerebral activity.

目前已经知道的是，两种不同的管家功能在睡眠中的大脑运行。比较平常的一种功能——这是2012年由美国罗彻斯特大学(University of Rochester)发现的——是一种排毒机制，它能清除大脑活动中产生的有毒蛋白质和其他细胞垃圾。

Another key operation that takes place during sleep is information-processing and memory consolidation — neural activity whose details remain elusive despite many years of scientific study.

睡眠时运行的另一项关键功能是信息处理和记忆巩固——尽管经过了多年科学研究，但这种神经活动的具体机制仍然难以捉摸。

⑭ prosaic [prə(ʊ)'zeɪɪk] adj. 平庸的；没有诗意（或美感）的；乏味的

例句：There may be a more prosaic explanation: bumbling governance in a secretive region with opaque leadership. 也许，最终的解释其实很平常：这是在一个政治不透明的地区所实行的装模作样的治理活动。

⑮ elusive [ɪ'l(j)uːsɪv] adj. 难找的；难以解释的

例句：And individuality, he agrees, is often elusive. 而且，他也认为，个性常常很不明显。

Photo credit: Getty Images

A good example of the theories being put forward to make sense of the emerging evidence was by Penny Lewis, a psychology professor at Cardiff University, with his international colleagues. Their model proposes that the brain organises information into a useful framework during non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, while REM helps us to see beyond that framework and make unexpected connections between memories.

最近，卡迪夫大学(Cardiff University)心理学教授佩妮•刘易斯(Penny Lewis)跟国际同僚提出了解释最新证据的理论。他们的模型提出，在非快速眼动睡眠期间，大脑将信息组织到一个有用的框架，而快速眼动睡眠帮助我们超越这个框架，在记忆之间建立起意想不到的联系。

But Lewis admits: “We have been very careful not to talk about dreaming in our paper. Indeed, I tend to stay away from dreaming, because it is hard to do scientific work on it.” Unfortunately for those eager to unlockthe mysteries of their dreams, many neuroscientists and psychologists today agree.

但刘易斯承认：“我们在论文中一直非常小心，没有谈及做梦。事实上，我倾向于远离做梦，因为我们很难对做梦展开科学研究。”对于那些渴望解锁自己梦境秘密的人，遗憾的是，当今许多神经科学家和心理学家都同意这一观点。

⑯ make sense of 了解[弄懂]…的意义

例句：International investors, by contrast, are looking at the system as a whole and cannot make sense of the cacophony. 可国际投资者将欧洲看做一个整体，无法理解其中的不和谐。

文章来源于网络，版权归原作者所有 返回搜狐，查看更多