睡眠有助于恢复记忆

Catching ZZZs may retrieve lost memories

睡眠有助于记忆恢复

Sleep can restore memories in forgetful fruit flies,new data show. This raises hope that some extraZZZs might also help people with Alzheimer's diseaseand other memory disorders.

新数据显示睡眠能帮助健忘的果蝇修复记忆。因此额外睡眠能帮助那些患有阿耳茨海默氏病和记忆障碍的患者重燃康复希望。

For a series of new experiments, researchers altered the genes of fruit flies. This causedvarious types of memory problems in the bugs. But the flies could get their memories back. Allthey needed was some solid snooze time.

在一系列研究中，研究者改变了果蝇的基因，导致果蝇各种记忆问题的出现。但只要有足够的深睡眠，它们还是能回复记忆的。

"Quite honestly, this is a stunning result," says Paul Shaw. A coauthor of the study, he worksat Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. "We take flies that are bad and we make thembetter," he notes. His team published details of its work online April 23 in Current Biology.

"事实上，这是一令人震惊的结果"，就职于密苏里州圣路易斯华盛顿大学的Paul Shaw表示。"我们试图把情况较坏的果蝇变好"，他注释到。他的团队4月23日在当代生物学上发表了他的研究细节。

If the fly research can be translated to people, the results suggest that "we ought to take thefrequent sleep disturbances in the aging population much more seriously," says MaikenNedergaard. She's a brain researcher, or neuroscientist, at the University of Rochester MedicalCenter in New York. Even simple steps to promote sleep might benefit people with memorytrouble, she says. Those steps can include getting more exercise and consuming less caffeine(which can make it hard to fall asleep).

如果苍蝇实验能转化到人类身上，结果表明"我们应该给予老龄化人频发的睡眠障碍更多重视"，MaikenNedergaard表示。她是一名纽约罗切斯特大学医学中心的脑部研究者，或者说是一位神经系统科学家，她表示尽管简单的步骤能帮助那些有睡眠障碍的人提高睡眠质量，但这些步骤包括跟多的联系及更少的咖啡消耗(咖啡因促使睡眠困难)。

Insects and people are different. That means the fly research doesn't necessarily apply to us.Still, dozing fruit flies act a lot like people. Sleeping flies hold very still. Snoozing flies are hard towake up.

昆虫和人类并不相同，意味着苍蝇实验不一定能应用到人类身上。但打盹的苍蝇和人类还是极为相似的，比如说熟睡的苍蝇纹丝不动，瞌睡的中的苍蝇难以醒来等等。