What if you could make your sleep moreefficient? As a sleep scientist, this is the question that has captivated mefor the past 10 years. Because while the lightbulb and technology have broughtabout a world of 24-hour work and productivity, it has come at the cost of ournaturally occurring circadian rhythm and our body's need for sleep.
如果能让你的睡眠更有效率，如何？身为睡眠科学家，在过去的十年间，我对这个问题很着迷。虽然电灯泡和科技已经造成了二十四小时工作和生产力的世界，但这是有代价的，代价就是我们自然的昼夜节律、以及我们的身体对睡眠的需求。
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The circadian rhythm dictates our energylevel throughout the day, and only recently we've been conducting a globalexperiment on this rhythm, which is putting our sleep health and ultimately ourlife quality in jeopardy. Because of this, we aren't getting the sleep we need,with the average American sleeping a whole hour less than they did in the1940s.
昼夜节律支配了我们一整天中的能量多寡，到最近，我们才针对此节律进行了一项全球性实验，让我们的睡眠健康，以及最终，我们的生命质量，置身危险之中。因为这个理由，我们没有得到我们需要的睡眠，美国人的平均睡眠时间比1940年代整整少了一小时。
For some reason, we decided to wear it as abadge of honor that we can get by on not enough sleep. This all adds up to areal health crisis. Most of us know that poor sleep is linked to diseases likeAlzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes. And if you gountreated with a sleep disorder like sleep apnea, you're more likely to getmany of these illnesses.
因为某种原因，我们决定把它当荣誉奖章来戴，以睡眠不足却仍能过活为荣。这些通通加起来，就成了真实的健康危机。大部份人知道睡眠不足和疾病相关，比如阿兹海默症、心血管疾病、中风、糖尿病。如果你有睡眠失调，像睡眠窒息，却没去治疗，你就更可能会得到许多这类疾病。
But did you know about sleep's impact on your mentalstates? Poor sleep makes us make risky, rash decisions and is a drain on ourcapacity for empathy. When sleep deprivation literally makes us more sensitiveto our own pain, it's not so surprising that we have a hard time relating toothers and just generally being a good and healthy person when we'resleep-deprived.
但你知道睡眠对你的心理状态有什么冲击吗？睡眠不足会让我们做出冒险、鲁莽的决策，且它会消耗掉我们同理的能力。因为缺乏睡眠真的让我们对痛苦更敏感，那就不足为怪，当我们睡眠不足时，会很难和别人和睦相处，连大体上做个健康的好人都很难。
Scientists are now starting to understandhow not only the quantity but also the quality of sleep impacts our health andwell-being. My research focuses on what many scientists believe is the mostregenerative stage of sleep: deep sleep. We now know that generally speaking,there are three stages of sleep: light sleep, rapid eye movement or REM and deep sleep.
科学家现在开始了解到睡眠的量与质量都会影响我们的健康和幸福。我的研究重点是许多科学家认为最有再生力的睡眠阶段：深度睡眠。我们现在知道，一般来说，睡眠有三个阶段：浅睡期、快速动眼期、及深度睡眠期。
We measure these stages by connecting electrodes to the scalp, chinand chest. In light sleep and REM, our brain waves are very similar to ourbrain waves in waking life. But our brain waves in deep sleep have these long-burstbrain waves that are very different from our waking life brain waves. Theselong-burst brain waves are called delta waves.
我们测量这些阶段的方式，是把电击贴在头皮、下巴、胸口。在浅睡期与快速动眼期、我们的脑波和我们醒着时非常相似。但深睡时的脑波，有很多长长的脉冲，和醒着时的脑波很不一样。这些长的脉冲被称为δ（delta）波。
When we don't get the deep sleepwe need, it inhibits our ability to learn and for our cells and bodies torecover. Deep sleep is how we convert all those interactions that we makeduring the day into our long-term memory and personalities. As we get older,we're more likely to lose these regenerative delta waves. So in way, deep sleepand delta waves are actually a marker for biological youth.
当我们没有得到我们需要的深睡时，就会阻碍我们的学习能力、我们的细胞和身体的恢复能力。深睡让我们把白天的互动转换为长期记忆和个性。当我们渐年长，我们就越有可能会失去这些有再生力的δ波。所以从某个角度来看，深睡与δ波其实算是生理年轻的标记。
So naturally, I wanted to get more deepsleep for myself and I literally tried almost every gadget, gizmo, device andhack out there -- consumer-grade, clinical-grade, what have you. I learned alot, and I found I really do need, like most people, eight hours of sleep. Ieven shifted my circadian component by changing my meals, exercise and lightexposure, but I still couldn't find a way to get a deeper night of sleep ...that is until I met Dr. Dmitry Gerashchenko from Harvard Medical School.
当然我要自己多深睡点，而我真的几乎试过每一种找得到的小玩意儿、小发明、装置，消费者等级或临床实验等级的。我学了很多，并且发现我和大部份人一样，真的需要睡足八小时。我甚至改变了我的生理节奏，方法是改变我的进餐、运动、和曝露在光线下的时间，但仍然找不到睡得更深沉的方式，直到我遇到了狄米崔盖瑞山柯博士，他是哈佛教授。
Dmitry told me about a new finding in theliterature, where a lab out of Germany showed that if you could play certainsounds at the right time in people's sleep, you could actually make sleepdeeper and more efficient. And what's more, is that this lab showed that youactually could improve next-day memory performance with this sound. Dmitry andI teamed up, and we began working on a way to build this technology.
狄米崔告诉我文献中的一项新发现，一间德国的实验室发现，如果能够在人们睡眠的正确时间播放某些声音，就能让睡眠更深、更有效。还有，这间实验室也发现，可用这种声音来改善隔天的记忆表现。我和狄米崔合作，我们开始想办法建立这种技术。
With our research lab collaborators at Penn State, we designed experiments in order tovalidate our system. And we've since received grant funding from the NationalScience Foundation and the National Institute of Health to develop thisdeep-sleep stimulating technology. Here's how it works. People came into thelab and we hooked them up to a number of devices, two of which I have on righthere -- not a fashion statement.
我们和在宾州州大实验室的合作者一起设计实验来验证我们的系统。我们从国家科学基金会和国立卫生研究院得到补助金资助，来开发这种深度睡眠刺激技术。它是这样运作的。人们来到实验室，我们把他们和几个装置链接，我这里戴着其中两个装置，可不是时尚宣言。
When we detected that people were in deepsleep, we played the deep-sleep stimulating sounds that were shown to make themhave deeper sleep. I'm going to demo this sound for you right now.
当我们侦测到人们在深睡时，就播放能刺激他们睡得更深的声音。我现在就来展示一下这个声音。
Pretty weird, right?
很怪异，是吧？
So that sound is actually at the same burstfrequency as your brain waves when your brain is in deep sleep. That soundpattern actually primes your mind to have more of these regenerative deltawaves. When we asked participants the next day about the sounds, they werecompletely unaware that we played the sounds, yet their brains responded withmore of these delta waves.
这声音的脉冲频率其实和你的深睡脑波相同。那种声音模式事实上能使你的大脑准备好，产生更多这些有再生力的δ波。当我们隔天问受试者这些声音，他们完全没意识到我们曾播放声音，而他们的脑却产生更多的δ波以呼应这种声音。
Here's an image of someone's brain wavesfrom the study that we conducted. See the bottom panel? This shows the soundbeing played at that burst frequency. Now look at the brain waves in the upperpart of the graph. You can see from the graph that the sound is actuallyproducing more of these regenerative delta waves. We learned that we couldaccurately track sleep without hooking people up to electrodes and make peoplesleep deeper. We're continuing to develop the right sound environment and sleephabitat to improve people's sleep health.
这张图是某个人的脑波，在我们的研究中记录的。看到下面的区块吗？它呈现出这声音是用那种脉冲频率来播放的。看看图中的上面区块，那些是脑波。从图可以看出，播放这声音就能产生更多有再生力的δ波。我们学到能够准确地追踪睡眠，而不用把电极贴在人身上，并且能让人睡得更深。我们还在持续发展对的声音环境和睡眠地点，来改善人们的睡眠健康。
Our sleep isn't as regenerative as it couldbe, but maybe one day soon, we could wear a small device and get more out ofour sleep.
我们的睡眠还可以更有再生力，但也许，不久之后，我们就可戴着一个小装置，让我们从睡眠中获益良多。
Thank you.(Applause)
谢谢。（掌声）