好睡眠讓你更聰明

It's surprising news bound to bring joy to students studying for exams everywhere. The best way to memorise newly-acquired knowledge is to go to sleep, scientists believe. Researchers in Germany found that the brain is better during sleep than during wakefulness at resisting attempts to scramble or corrupt a recent memory. Their study, published in Nature Neuroscience, provides new insights into the hugely complex process by which we store and retrieve deliberately acquired information -- learning, in short.
　　科學家的這項最新的研究估計能讓廣大莘莘學子“雀躍萬分”了，因爲研究發現：睡眠使得人們吸收新知識、記住新信息的能力大大提高，也就是說，睡覺是最好的吸收新知識的方式。想學習？想變的更加聰明？睡覺去吧！據悉，來自德國的研究員發現人處於睡眠狀態時，大腦更能“記住和吸收”剛學到的知識，恰恰相反，如果人在清醒狀態的時候，人的大腦會對剛學到的知識、剛接收到的信息產生“本能的抵制”，比起睡覺的時候，處理新信息的能力要差得好多。這項最新的調查結果發表在《自然神經科學》雜誌上，這項雜誌主要分析了人的神經系統對於在學習的認知能力上起到什麼作用。

Fresh memories, stored temporarily in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, do not gel immediately, earlier research showed. It was also known that reactivation of those memories soon after learning plays a crucial role in their transfer to more permanent storage in the brain's 'hard drive', the neocortex. During wakefulness, however, this period of reactivation renders the memories more fragile. Learning a second poem at this juncture, for example, will likely make it harder to commit the first one to deep memory.

爲什麼睡覺反而是吸收新知識的最好方式呢？科學家是這樣解答的。這是要源於大腦中的“海馬體”的“吸收習慣”的原因，據悉，大腦內的海馬體煮藥負責學習和記憶，日常生活中的記憶，特別是“短期記憶”都儲存在海馬體中，如果一個記憶片段，比如一個電話號碼或者一個人在短時間內被重複提及的話通過海馬體，就會被它轉存入‘大腦硬盤’大腦皮層，成爲永久記憶。而海馬體在處理短期記憶時，不能做到“及時”處理，特別在大腦清醒狀態時，海馬體對於激活短期記憶會有“遲鈍”的本能反應，在清醒狀態中，對於暫時學到的新信息海馬體不能馬上立刻“吸收”。

Lead author Dr Susanne Diekelmann said: 'Reactivation of memories had completely different effects on the state of wakefulness and sleep. 'Based on brain imaging data, we suggest the reason for this unexpected result is that already during the first few minutes of sleep, the transfer from hippocampus to neocortex has been initiated.' After only 40 minutes of sleep, significant chunks of memory were already 'downloaded' and stored where they 'could no longer be disrupted by new information that is encoded in the hippocampus', she explained.

醫生Susanne Diekelmann說：“大腦分別在清醒狀態和混沌狀態時，處理暫時記憶的效果是大大不同的。基於我們最新對大腦的分析，當人在處於輕度睡眠狀態時，也就是剛進入睡眠的前2分鐘，大腦內的海馬體向大腦‘硬盤’大腦皮層的轉化活動就會被激活，經過40分鐘的睡眠，新吸收的知識就會完全‘下載’到大腦硬盤中，成爲永久記憶。也就是說，睡眠反而是吸收最新知識的最佳方式！”