做夢(mèng)的意義
By Heather Catchpole
作者：希瑟·凱奇坡
Published 16 August 2010
發(fā)表于2010年8月16日
Sleep plays an active part in turning around the experiences we have in the day.
睡覺(jué)能積極地轉(zhuǎn)化我們白天的體驗(yàn)。
We may not always remember them, but dreams may play a very important role in laying down memories and learning new tasks.
可能我們不能全部記住夢(mèng)，但是夢(mèng)有助于找出記憶，學(xué)習(xí)新的工作。
Dreams can be terrifying, erotic, bizarre or even banal. But what are dreams to the human mind? Are they, as Sigmund Freud suggested, messages from our unconscious mind? Are we opening our mind to new ideas, or simply trying to remember what we've learned that day?
夢(mèng)可能是可怕的、性欲的、怪誕的或者甚至是平凡的。但是夢(mèng)對(duì)人類大腦意味著什么呢？是像西格蒙德·弗洛伊德說(shuō)的潛意識(shí)的信息嗎？我們做夢(mèng)是打開(kāi)心靈新思路呢，還是僅僅記住當(dāng)天我們所知道的東西？
We've come a long way since Freud's early theories of dream interpretation. Our dreams might be startling, but often we remember very little — sometimes nothing — of the two or more hours we dream each night.
直到弗洛伊德的夢(mèng)的解釋的早期理論，我們探究夢(mèng)走了漫長(zhǎng)的一段路。我們的夢(mèng)也許是驚人的，但是常常我們記住的只是少少的一部分——有時(shí)什么也沒(méi)記住——每個(gè)晚上我們可能兩個(gè)小時(shí)或更多的時(shí)間在做夢(mèng)。
But while we may not recall our nocturnal visions, scientists increasingly believe our dreams play an important role in memory and learning. And what we remember or learn varies throughout the sleep cycle.
但是盡管我們回想不起夜間夢(mèng)景，科學(xué)家日益相信我們的夢(mèng)對(duì)我們的記憶和學(xué)習(xí)起到重要作用。我們的所記所學(xué)貫穿整個(gè)睡眠周期變化著。
Sleep patterns
睡眠類型
We dream during different sleep stages throughout the night. Vivid, emotional and often very weird dreams are typical of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which makes up about 20 per cent of our sleep. In between cycles of REM sleep, we have non-REM sleep, which includes deep or 'slow-wave' sleep. Dreams during deep sleep are often 'thought-like' and are more typically anchored in reality.
一整夜，我們?cè)诓煌唠A段都做夢(mèng)。生動(dòng)逼真的、情緒的以及常常不可思議的夢(mèng)是快速眼動(dòng)睡眠階段的特點(diǎn)，快速眼動(dòng)睡眠占據(jù)了我們睡眠的20%時(shí)間。在快速眼動(dòng)睡眠周期之間，我們還有非快速眼動(dòng)睡眠，包括深度睡眠和慢波期睡眠。深度睡眠時(shí)的夢(mèng)常常類似于思考，更典型地緊緊貼合現(xiàn)實(shí)。
"REM dreams tend to be longer, more visually intense and more emotional," says Associate Professor Robert Stickgold, a lead memory and dream researcher at the Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“快速眼動(dòng)周期的夢(mèng)常常長(zhǎng)一點(diǎn)，更視覺(jué)化一些，也更多些情緒化，”副教授羅伯特·斯蒂克哥德說(shuō)，他是波士頓哈佛醫(yī)學(xué)院的一位重要的記憶與夢(mèng)研究員。
Slow-wave dreams tend to be harder to get people to recall in sleep experiments, and are more related to episodic memories; our record of personal experience, he says.
慢波期的夢(mèng)常常很難讓人回憶起睡眠中的實(shí)驗(yàn)，更多的和情景記憶有關(guān)，是個(gè)人體驗(yàn)的記錄，他說(shuō)。
During REM sleep, our brain's electrical activity mirrors its activity when we're awake. The brain stem is active, as is most of the forebrain, including the neocortex — our 'centre' of higher mental processing; the thalamus, which relays sensory inputs; and the amygdala and hippocampus, sections of the brain that deal with emotions as well as memory storage and recall。
在快速眼動(dòng)睡眠期，我們大腦的腦電活動(dòng)反映了我們醒著時(shí)大腦的活動(dòng)。腦干是活躍的，如同前腦的大部分一樣，包括新（大腦）皮質(zhì)——我們的高心智處理中心；丘腦，傳遞了感覺(jué)輸入；杏仁核和海馬，大腦中處理情緒和記憶存儲(chǔ)和回憶的區(qū)域。
"In REM sleep, brain activity is fairly high, particularly in the cortex, similar to when we are lightly asleep or even awake," says Dr Keith Wong, a sleep physician and researcher from the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research at the University of Sydney.
“在快速眼動(dòng)睡眠期，大腦活動(dòng)相當(dāng)高，尤其在腦皮層，類似于我們淺睡甚至是醒著的時(shí)候，”王凱斯博士說(shuō)，他是悉尼大學(xué)醫(yī)學(xué)研究所的一位睡眠醫(yī)師和研究員。
In the deeper stages of non-REM sleep brain activity is slower. "There is an oscillation between the thalamus and the cortex [during slow wave sleep], a resonance that occurs at a low frequency that blocks off impulses from the rest of the body — the brain becomes isolated," he says.
在非快速眼動(dòng)睡眠期的更深層階段，腦活動(dòng)較慢一點(diǎn)。“丘腦和腦皮層之間有一種振動(dòng)（深層睡眠時(shí)的慢波期），在低頻率下產(chǎn)生的共鳴阻擋了身體其余部分的脈沖——大腦就變孤立了，”他說(shuō)。
How much sleep do you get? Find out about your sleep habits and contribute to what could be the biggest scientific sleep survey ever!
你睡眠有多久？找出你的睡眠習(xí)慣，為可能是迄今為止最大的科學(xué)睡眠調(diào)查做點(diǎn)貢獻(xiàn)！
The Big Sleep Survey 2010 is a real citizen science research project. Australian sleep scientists want to find out how much sleep we're getting, whether mobiles and laptops in the bedroom are affecting our sleep, and how many of us experience parasomnias, such as sleep walking.
2010沉睡調(diào)查是一項(xiàng)真實(shí)的市民科學(xué)調(diào)查項(xiàng)目。澳大利亞睡眠科學(xué)家想要查明我們獲得了多少睡眠，臥室的移動(dòng)通訊和電腦產(chǎn)品是否影響了我們的睡眠，以及我們中有多少人經(jīng)歷過(guò)異睡癥，比如夢(mèng)游。
Dreaming to forget or remember?
做夢(mèng)是忘記還是記憶？
The connection between dreams and their role in memory go back a long way.
夢(mèng)以及其作用之間的聯(lián)系要回溯到很久以前。
Early theories suggested dreams were just a kind of mind sieve that captures our important memories.
早期的理論表明，夢(mèng)只是一種抓住重要記憶的意識(shí)篩子。
"Dreams were never designed to be remembered, but they are keys to who we are," the late neuroscientist Associate Professor Jonathan Winson wrote in 1985 in Brain and Psyche: The biology of the unconscious. Winson believed that when we dream the hippocampus 'teaches' the neocortex what it learnt that day — effectively reinforcing memory.
“夢(mèng)從來(lái)都不在于被記住，但是它們是知道我們是誰(shuí)的關(guān)鍵，”近期的神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)科學(xué)家副教授喬納森·文森在1985年的《大腦與心靈：潛意識(shí)生物學(xué)》中寫道。文森認(rèn)為，當(dāng)我們夢(mèng)到海馬“教”腦皮層當(dāng)天它所獲悉的東西時(shí)——實(shí)際上是在加強(qiáng)記憶。
Two years' earlier, neuroscientists and molecular biologists Francis Crick (the 'father' of DNA) and Graeme Mitchison proposed that dreams eliminate 'spurious memories' created in the brain by overlaps in the process of storing memories.
更早的兩年，神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)科學(xué)家和分子生物學(xué)家們弗朗西斯·克里克（DNA之父）和格雷姆·米其森 提出，夢(mèng)排除大腦中存儲(chǔ)記憶過(guò)程中重疊的偽造記憶。
"We dream in order to forget"," they said. That is, dreams help us to remember by wiping clean the brain's unwanted 'white noise'.
“我們做夢(mèng)是為了忘記，”他們說(shuō)道。也就是說(shuō)，夢(mèng)幫助我們拭凈大腦中不需要的‘白噪音’來(lái)記憶。
But more recently scientists such as Stickgold suggest dreams play a more active role.
但是最近的科學(xué)家比如斯蒂克哥德，提出，夢(mèng)有更積極的作用。
There's convincing evidence that dreaming helps us learn and that, when we dream, the brain is making connections which help us to integrate and abstract general 'rules' from information in our memory, says Stickgold.
這有令人信服的證據(jù)：夢(mèng)幫助我們學(xué)習(xí)，我們做夢(mèng)的時(shí)候，大腦在做幫助我們從記憶中信息整合和提取一般法則的聯(lián)系，斯蒂克哥德說(shuō)。
In research published in Current Biology earlier this year Stickgold and colleagues at the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Harvard show dreaming about a specific task predicts improved performance on that task.
這年早些時(shí)候發(fā)布在《當(dāng)代生物學(xué)》上的研究里，斯蒂克哥德和其在哈佛睡眠與認(rèn)知中心的同事說(shuō)明，夢(mèng)見(jiàn)一項(xiàng)特殊的任務(wù)預(yù)示著改善那項(xiàng)任務(wù)的執(zhí)行效果。
They trained 99 volunteers to complete a virtual maze as quickly as possible. Half of the volunteers then had an afternoon nap, while the rest stayed awake. After five hours the volunteers had another go at the maze; this time, those who napped showed signs of improvement.
他們訓(xùn)練了99個(gè)志愿者盡快地完成一個(gè)虛擬的迷宮。半數(shù)志愿者當(dāng)時(shí)有午睡，其余的是醒著的。五個(gè)小時(shí)后，志愿者再走迷宮，這一次，午睡了的志愿者顯示出提高的跡象。
But four people, who initially performed poorly and who had had maze-like dreams during non-REM sleep, (such as hearing the maze's soundtrack or meeting people along checkpoints in the maze), showed a ten-fold improvement over those who didn't dream about the maze. The research indicates that dreams seem to reflect the brain's continued learning processes playing out while we sleep, Stickgold suggests.
但是最初表現(xiàn)糟糕以及在非快速眼動(dòng)睡眠期做了類似迷宮的夢(mèng)的四個(gè)人，（比如聽(tīng)到了迷宮聲道或者碰見(jiàn)了沿著迷宮里檢驗(yàn)點(diǎn)的人），表示出比那些沒(méi)有夢(mèng)見(jiàn)過(guò)迷宮的人十倍的提高。斯蒂克哥德提出，研究表明，當(dāng)我們睡的時(shí)候，夢(mèng)似乎反映出大腦的持續(xù)學(xué)習(xí)過(guò)程在繼續(xù)，并要到結(jié)束。
"One of the goals of this research is to figure out why experiences are incorporated into dreams, to tell us what the brain's is trying to do when it's making this dream," he says.
“這個(gè)研究的一個(gè)目標(biāo)就是找出為什么經(jīng)歷會(huì)合并到夢(mèng)里去，告訴我們大腦在造這個(gè)夢(mèng)時(shí)，大腦想做的，”他說(shuō)道。
"What we think is happening is the brain is replaying these neural patterns that contain the information on what the game is about and that is leading to enhanced performance."
“我們認(rèn)為正在發(fā)生的東西是大腦在重演這些神經(jīng)模式，包括游戲是什么的信息，這導(dǎo)致了執(zhí)行效果的提高。”
A previous study by Stickgold, published in Science, exposed amnesiacs and non-memory-impaired volunteers to hours of the addictive game Tetris and reinforced the idea that the brain uses dreams to learn, whether we are aware of it or not. Both amnesiacs and other volunteers showed improved performance on the game after replaying it in their minds as they dropped off to sleep — even though the amnesiacs had no memory of playing the game.
斯蒂克哥德此前的一項(xiàng)研究，發(fā)表在《科學(xué)》上，這項(xiàng)研究是讓健忘癥患者和無(wú)記憶受損志愿者數(shù)小時(shí)沉溺在能上癮的俄羅斯方塊游戲里，研究強(qiáng)化了“不管我們是否醒著，大腦利用夢(mèng)來(lái)學(xué)習(xí)”的觀點(diǎn)。健忘癥患者和其他的志愿者都表現(xiàn)出，他們睡著了時(shí)腦中重演游戲，他們的游戲能力有所提高——盡管健忘癥患者沒(méi)有玩了游戲的記憶。
Stickgold believes what's going on is that the brain keeps track of unfinished cognitive processes, for example when you can't remember someone's name and it later pops into your head. It may be that while dreaming, these cognitive processes can continue unabated.
斯蒂克哥德認(rèn)為，真正起作用的是大腦和未完成地認(rèn)知過(guò)程保持聯(lián)系，比如，你記不得某人的名字的時(shí)候，過(guò)一會(huì)突然閃現(xiàn)在你腦中。可能是當(dāng)做夢(mèng)時(shí)，這些認(rèn)知過(guò)程可以持續(xù)不減退。
"When you dream the brain is creating possibilities," he says.
“你做夢(mèng)時(shí)，大腦在創(chuàng)造可能性，”他說(shuō)。
Making connections
制造聯(lián)系
While it's now well established that dreams may be important for memory and learning, the way we learn during different phases of sleep is less clear.
盡管夢(mèng)可能對(duì)記憶和學(xué)習(xí)很重要既成事實(shí)，在睡眠不同階段我們學(xué)習(xí)的方式還不是很明晰。
Some research has shown that dreaming supports the development of connections in the brain where brain cells — neurons — signal each other at junctions called synapses. The growth of synaptic connections takes place during the first few hours of learning and storing of short-term memories.
一些研究顯示，做夢(mèng)支持了大腦中聯(lián)系的發(fā)展，腦細(xì)胞——神經(jīng)細(xì)胞——在突觸節(jié)點(diǎn)互相發(fā)信號(hào)通知。在第一個(gè)學(xué)習(xí)和存儲(chǔ)短期記憶的幾個(gè)小時(shí)里，突觸連接的發(fā)展發(fā)生了。
We may learn differently during different sleep stages, says German sleep expert Professor Jan Born from the University of Lübeck.
我們可能在不同睡眠階段學(xué)習(xí)的不一樣，呂貝克大學(xué)的德國(guó)睡眠專家教授簡(jiǎn)·伯恩說(shuō)。
"Slow wave sleep (SWS) particularly enhances declarative memories [facts and personal memories] whereas rapid eye movement (REM) sleep preferentially supports procedural and emotional memory aspects [those memories that are harder to verbalise, like riding a bike or understanding the rules of a game]," he recently wrote in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews.
“慢波期睡眠明確地增強(qiáng)了陳述性記憶（事實(shí)和個(gè)人記憶），然后快速眼動(dòng)睡眠傾向性地支持過(guò)程和情緒記憶方面（那些記憶很難用詞語(yǔ)表達(dá)，像騎自行車或者理解游戲的規(guī)則），”近期他在期刊《睡眠醫(yī)學(xué)評(píng)論》上寫到。
Both Born and Stickgold agree that the roles of dreams in the brain may be more complex, and that different sleep stages support the gradual stabilisation of memory in the brain — but they disagree on the role of different sleep stages in this stabilisation process. "So we clearly don't [fully] understand it," says Stickgold.
伯恩和斯蒂克哥德都認(rèn)為，夢(mèng)在大腦中的作用可能更為復(fù)雜，不同的睡眠階段維持了腦中記憶的逐漸平穩(wěn)——但是他們不同意在這個(gè)穩(wěn)定過(guò)程中不同睡眠階段的作用?！八晕覀冿@然不了解它，”斯蒂克哥德說(shuō)。
He points out that even those with high dream recall are lucky to remember more than ten minutes of their dreams. "If there's an evolutionary value to dreaming it has to be something that's going on in the background and it doesn't matter if you remember that [dream]," he says.
他指出，即使那些有著高夢(mèng)回憶的人幸運(yùn)的記起了他們夢(mèng)的十多分鐘的內(nèi)容。“做夢(mèng)有一種發(fā)展的重要性，在后面有某種東西在起作用，如果你會(huì)議起了那夢(mèng)也沒(méi)有什么，”他說(shuō)。
While we still have a lot to learn about dreams, Stickgold's research shows that sleep plays an active part in turning around the experiences we have in the day, says Wong.
然而對(duì)于夢(mèng)我們還是有很多需要學(xué)習(xí)的，斯蒂克哥德的研究表明，夢(mèng)在把我們白天的體驗(yàn)轉(zhuǎn)化中有積極作用，王說(shuō)道。
Dreams may be just how our consciousness interprets brain activity during sleep, he says.
他說(shuō)，夢(mèng)可能僅僅是我們意識(shí)在睡眠中如何解釋腦活動(dòng)。
"It's still a mystery what the function of sleep is and the roles dreams play in sleep. I think we will be speculating about this for years to come."
“睡眠的功能以及夢(mèng)在睡眠中的作用仍是一個(gè)謎。我想估計(jì)還要些年才能解開(kāi)?！?/p>
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