Sleep Is Your Superpower | Matt Walker | TED · TED
睡眠不仅是生命支持系统，更是大脑学习与记忆的关键。本视频通过科学实验揭示睡眠不足对身体和大脑的负面影响，适合练习英语听力和理解科学类内容。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢您。
Well, I would like to start with testicles.
好吧，我想先从睾丸开始讲起。
Men who sleep five hours a night have significantly smaller testicles than those who sleep seven hours or more.
每晚只睡5小时的男性，其睾丸体积明显小于那些每晚睡眠7小时或更长时间的男性。
In addition, men who routinely sleep just
此外，那些经常只睡很短时间的男性……
four to five hours a night will have a level of testosterone which is that of someone 10 years their senior.
每晚睡眠四到五小时会导致体内的睾酮水平升高，达到相当于比实际年龄大十岁的人的睾酮水平。
So a lack of sleep will age a man by a decade in terms of that critical aspect of wellness.
因此，从健康状况的关键角度来看，睡眠不足会使人看起来老上十年。
And we see equivalent impairments in female reproductive health caused by a lack of sleep.
我们也发现，睡眠不足同样会导致女性生殖健康出现问题（即生殖健康受到损害）。
This is the best news that I have for you today.
这是我今天能告诉你的最好的消息了。
From this point, it may only get worse.
从现在开始，情况可能会变得更糟。
Not only will I tell you about the wonderfully good things
我不仅会告诉你们那些非常美好的事情……
that happen when you get sleep, but the alarmingly bad things that happen when you don't get enough,
这些情况会在你入睡时发生；而更令人担忧的是，当你睡眠不足时，还会出现一些极其糟糕的问题。
both for your brain and for your body.
这对你的大脑和身体都有好处。
Let me start with the brain and the functions of learning and memory,
让我先从大脑以及学习与记忆的功能说起。
because what we've discovered over the past 10 or so years
因为在过去的十年左右时间里，我们发现了一些重要的东西……
is that you need sleep after learning to essentially hit the save button on those new memories so that you don't forget.
其实，当你学会如何将这些新形成的记忆“保存”下来（即让它们长期留在大脑中）之后，你是需要休息的——这样才能避免忘记这些记忆。
But recently, we discovered that you also need sleep before learning
但最近我们发现：在学习之前，人们也需要睡眠。
to actually prepare your brain, almost like a dry sponge ready to initially soak up new information.
其实，这是在让你的大脑做好准备——就像一块干燥的海绵，随时准备吸收新的信息。
And without sleep, the memory circuits of the brain essentially become waterlogged, as it were, and you can't absorb new memories.
由于缺乏睡眠，大脑的记忆回路会“变得淤塞”（或者说无法正常运作），从而无法吸收新的记忆信息。
So let me show you the data.
那么，让我向你们展示这些数据吧。
Here in this study, we decided to test the hypothesis that pulling the all-nighter was a good idea.
在这项研究中，我们决定验证这样一个假设：通宵熬夜是否真的是一个明智的选择。
So we took a group of individuals and we assigned them to one of two experimental groups: a sleep group and a sleep deprivation group.
我们选取了一组受试者，并将他们分为两个实验组：睡眠组与睡眠剥夺组。
Now the sleep group, they're going to get a full eight hours of slumber, but the deprivation group,
现在来看睡眠组：他们将获得整整八小时的睡眠时间；而睡眠不足组则……
we're going to keep them awake in the laboratory, under full supervision.
我们将在实验室里让它们保持清醒状态，并在整个实验过程中对其进行严密监督。
There's no naps or caffeine, by the way, so it's miserable for everyone involved.
顺便说一下，这里不允许小睡或摄入咖啡因，因此对所有参与者来说都是一件非常痛苦的事情。
And then the next day, we're going
然后第二天，我们就会继续前进。
to place those participants inside an MRI scanner and we're going to have them try and learn a whole list of new facts
我们将把这些参与者放入核磁共振（MRI）扫描仪中，让他们尝试学习一整套新的知识内容。
as we're taking snapshots of brain activity.
当我们正在记录大脑活动的实时数据（即“快照”）时……
And then we're going to test them to see how effective that learning has been.
然后我们将对这些学习成果进行测试，以评估学习效果究竟如何。
And that's what you're looking at here on the vertical axis.
这就是你在垂直轴上看到的内容。
And when you put those two groups head to head, what you find is a quite significant, 40-percent deficit
当你将这两组人直接进行对比时，你会发现一个相当显著的差异：其中一组的成绩比另一组低了40%。
in the ability of the brain to make new memories without sleep.
大脑在无需睡眠的情况下仍能够形成新的记忆。
I think this should be concerning, considering what we know is happening to sleep in our education populations right now.
考虑到我们目前所了解的关于青少年睡眠状况的情况，我认为这确实应该引起我们的重视。
In fact, to put that in context, it would be the difference in a child acing an exam versus failing it miserably -- 40 percent.
事实上，打个比方来说，这就好比一个孩子在考试中取得优异成绩与考得一塌糊涂之间的差距——差距高达 40%。
And we've gone on to discover what goes wrong within your brain to produce these types of learning disabilities.
随后，我们进一步研究了大脑内部究竟发生了什么异常，才会导致这类学习障碍的出现。
And there's a structure that sits on the left and the right side of your brain, called the hippocampus.
在你大脑的左侧和右侧，各有一个被称为“海马体”的结构。
And you can think of the hippocampus almost like the informational inbox of your brain.
你可以把海马体看作是大脑中的“信息收件箱”。
It's very good at receiving new memory files and then holding on to them.
它非常擅长接收新的内存文件，并将这些文件保存下来。
And when you look at this structure in those people who'd had a full night of sleep, we saw lots of healthy learning-related activity.
当你观察那些经过整晚睡眠的人的大脑结构时，我们发现大脑中存在大量与学习相关的健康活动（即大脑功能处于活跃状态）。
Yet in those people who were sleep-deprived, we actually couldn't find any significant signal whatsoever.
然而，在那些睡眠不足的人群中，我们实际上并没有发现任何显著的生理变化或信号。
So it's almost as though sleep deprivation had shut down your memory inbox, and any new incoming files -- they were just being bounced.
可以说，睡眠不足几乎就像“关闭”了你的记忆系统（或者说，阻碍了新信息的存储与处理）；任何新进入的记忆信息都会被直接忽略或被“弹出”（即无法被正确处理）。