梦里感官:气味如何影响我们的梦境

Have you ever fallen asleep with the television on and then had a dream that you were part of the show? Or gone to sleep after a big fight with your significant other and then had a dream where you were being chased? Or played the slumber party game where you put one girl’s hand in a cup of warm water and tried to make her wet the bed? Scientists have known for a long time that there’s some kind of relationship between our dreams and the sounds and sensations happening around us and most of us have had a dream where some external stimulus—a sight, a sound, a memory—seemed to be an influence. What if different smells can influence our dreams, too?

你有看着电视睡着，然后梦见自己成了剧中人的经历吗？你有和爱人大吵一架，然后梦见自己在梦里被追打的经历吗？你有在玩睡眠派对游戏的时候，把女生的手放到温水里让她尿床的经历吗？科学家在很久以前就发现睡眠和声音及其他感觉有关，看到的、听到的或者记忆中的某些外部刺激会对大多数人的梦境产生影响。那么，气味是否也能影响我们的梦境呢？

Rotten Eggs = Rotten Dreams?
臭鸡蛋=噩梦？

They just might be able to. In a recent German study at the University Hospital, Mannheim, two sleep researchers did an experiment where they wafted different smells under the noses of fifteen women sleeping in a lab (women are ideal for studies on smell, since research has shown that their olfactory senses are notably keener than men’s).

这一等式可以成立。近期在德国曼海姆的一所大学附属医院里进行了这样一项研究：两名睡眠研究人员在实验室里对15位女性进行了研究（对女性进行气味研究更为理想，因为研究证明她们的嗅觉器官比男性灵敏得多）。实验中，研究人员让不同的气味飘进熟睡女性的鼻子。

While in REM sleep, the phase where dreams are most likely to occur, each woman in the study was tested three times—once with phenyl ethyl alcohol, a scent resembling roses; once with hydrogen sulfide, which mimics the sulfurous stench of rotten eggs; and once with a neutral scent. A minute after being exposed to the odor, they were woken up and interviewed about their dreams.

在眼球急速转动的睡眠初期，梦境最容易产生。研究人员对每位女性进行了三次测试——第一次用了苯乙烯醇，一种类似玫瑰的香味；第二次用硫化氢来模拟臭鸡蛋里的硫化物恶臭；最后一次用了中性的气味。体验一分钟以后，她们被叫醒，询问实验过程中的梦境。

Curious Conclusions
有趣的结论

What was most interesting was that the women reported that the dreams themselves were not necessarily good or bad—no one had terrible nightmares or dreams about jetting to Hawaii with George Clooney—but the odors very much influenced how the dreams made the women feel. The researchers discovered that upon waking, those who smelled a pleasant scent reported having had pleasant dreams, and those who smelled something bad reported that their dreams corresponded. Although the smells didn’t seem to alter the content of their dreams, it did affect how they felt about them.

最有趣的发现在于参与实验的女性们并没有出现绝对意义上的美梦或者噩梦——没有人做太恐怖的梦，也没有人梦见和乔治·克鲁尼共赴夏威夷。但是，气味在很大程度上影响了她们对梦境的感觉。研究人员发现在被唤醒后，闻过芳香气味的女性都说做了美梦，而另一部分则说梦境很糟糕。尽管气味不见得能改变梦境，但是它能够改变做梦的人的主观感受

If you’re sleeping in a room with a ringing alarm clock or a snoring spouse, it’s common for your brain to incorporate those noises into your dreams, but most of the women in the study didn’t remember having dreams in which there was a particular scent or odor. This interesting fact seems to suggest that there’s something very unique about our sense of smell and the way it’s processed.

如果你睡觉的房间里有响着的闹钟和打鼾的伴侣，嘈杂声通常会潜入你的大脑，但是大多数女性在研究过程中忘记了自己是在特殊气味作用下做的梦。这一有趣的现象似乎意味着气味在影响梦境过程中不同于其他感觉。

This study was very small, and no other researchers have yet attempted to replicate its findings, so it’s hard to determine conclusively whether odors really can affect our dreams. Also, there are many different smells out there to test besides rotten eggs and roses. However, if you regularly have unhappy dreams, maybe it’s not a bad idea to check around your house for hidden smell culprits that might be sabotaging you. At the very least, it’s another good reason to cook a batch of chocolate chip cookies before bed.

这只是一项小研究，到目前为止还没有别的研究人员验证这些研究成果，所以很难对气味是否影响梦境下定论。而且，除了臭鸡蛋和玫瑰以外还有许许多多形形色色的气味。当然，如果你时常做噩梦的话，可以检查下房子周围是否潜藏着盗梦的气味元凶。至少，这给在睡觉前烤一炉碎巧克力饼干提供了一大理由。