健忘癥！別慌，好好睡一覺再說

Forgetfulness. It's a sure sign that we're getting older. We forget where we parked, forget to bring our coupons to the store or forget why we came to the store in the first place. But what if all of those memory lapses are less a sign of old age than they are a sign of poor sleep?

健忘常常被認為是變老的征兆之一。取車時會忘記車停在那兒了，結(jié)賬時會忘記帶優(yōu)惠券了，甚至有時候會忘記我們到底為什么要去商店。如果這些表現(xiàn)不是意味著你變老了，而是更多地意味著缺少合適的睡眠呢?

A new study published in the journal Neuron has found that the brain waves of older adults become out of sync during sleep. And these brain waves may play a critical role in the ability to download new memories. It may not be the sheer act of aging that is causing us to forget; it may be brain waves that lose their rhythm over time.

《神經(jīng)元》雜志上的一項新研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，在睡夢中，老年人的腦電波變得不再同步，而這些腦電波關(guān)系著記憶新事物的能力。或許我們記憶力下降不是因為變老了，而是因為腦電波的節(jié)奏亂了。

A good night's sleep

睡個好覺

For the study, a team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley conducted two tests. First, they recruited 20 young adults and asked them to learn 120 pairs of words. Then they let them go to sleep while monitoring their brain waves. Electrodes were used to measure two types of brain waves; slow waves, which fire about every second, and fast waves, called sleep spindles, which occur about 12 times each second.

加利福尼亞大學(xué)伯克利分校的一組研究人員針對此進行了兩次測試。他們找來了20名年輕人，先讓他們學(xué)習(xí)120對單詞，再讓他們睡覺，睡覺時檢測他們的腦電波。他們用電極測量兩種類型的腦電波：慢波差不多每秒1次，而快波，也就是我們熟知的睡眠紡錘波，大約每秒12次。

When the researchers evaluated the young adults the next morning, they found a correlation between the rhythm of these brain waves and the participants' ability to remember the newly acquired information (in this case, the 120 pairs of words.) Those whose fast and slow waves were synchronized remembered more pairs of words than those who did not.

第二天早上，研究人員對這些年輕人進行了評估，發(fā)現(xiàn)這些腦電波的節(jié)奏與參與者記下新知識的能力有關(guān)(在本次研究中，指的是120對單詞)。相對快波慢波不同步的人，同步者記住的單詞數(shù)量更多。

For the second test, researchers repeated the experiment but this time they recruited 32 people in their 60s and 70s. Once again, the participants whose fast and slow waves were in-sync had an easier time remembering the word pairs. But researchers found that the brain waves of these older participants were less synchronized overall.

第二次實驗，內(nèi)容與第一次相同。但這次研究人員找的人是32個60-70歲之間的人。當(dāng)然，也再次證明了同步者比非同步者記憶單詞的能力更強。除此之外，他們還發(fā)現(xiàn)老年人的腦電波同步情況不如年輕人那么好。

As you can imagine, it doesn't take much for these brain waves to step out of rhythm.

所以可想而知，腦電波的節(jié)奏失調(diào)實在是太常見了。

"If you're like 50 milliseconds too early, 50 milliseconds too late, then the storing mechanism actually doesn't work," Randolph Helfrich a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkley and one of the authors of the study told NPR.

“如果你覺得50毫秒太早，或者太晚，這可能就說明你大腦內(nèi)的存儲機制并沒有發(fā)揮作用。” Randolph Helfrich說。他是伯克利分校的博士后研究員之一。

Regaining your rhythm

恢復(fù)節(jié)奏

Why do the brain waves get out-of-sync as we age? Helfrich and his team think it might have to do with atrophy that occurs in the section of the brain that aids in deep sleep. The more atrophy they noted in the participants, the more out of sync their brain waves were and the more difficulty they had remembering new information.

為什么隨著年齡的增長腦電波會變得不同步?Helfrich認為可能與大腦中控制深度睡眠區(qū)的萎縮有關(guān)。參與者的萎縮情況越厲害，腦電波就越難以同步，記憶東西也就越難了。

The good news is that if it is in fact out of sync brain waves that hamper memory, researchers may be able to develop a treatment using electrical or magnetic pulses to stimulate the activity in this area of the brain and get those waves firing in sync again.

但好消息是，如果真的是不同步的腦電波導(dǎo)致了記憶力衰退，研究人員可能研發(fā)出一種利用電脈沖或磁脈沖來刺激大腦中這部分區(qū)域的技術(shù)，使得慢波快波再次同步起來。

"The idea is to boost those brain waves and bring them back together," Helfrich said.Potentially, this could help older adults who are having trouble with memory loss as well as those suffering from dementia or other conditions that involve memory impairment.

“我們目前的想法是促進腦電波的發(fā)射，并讓他們再次同步。” Helfrich說。對那些失憶的年輕人、患有癡呆癥的人等記憶方面存在問題的人群來說，這可能是一個福音。

We don't need the fountain of youth. We just need to get our rhythm back.

我們不需要青春永駐，只需要腦電波的同步，節(jié)奏的恢復(fù)。