托福閱讀材料之睡得好記得牢

　　It is surprising news bound to bring joy to students studying for exams everywhere. The best way to memorise newly-acquired knowledge is to go to sleep, scientists believe. Researchers in Germany found that the brain is better during sleep than during wakefulness at resisting attempts to scramble or corrupt a recent memory. Their study, published in Nature Neuroscience, provides new insights into the hugely complex process by which we store and retrieve deliberately acquired information -- learning, in short.

　　莘莘學(xué)子們聽到下面這則出乎意料的新聞后一定是喜上眉梢。據(jù)科學(xué)家研究顯示，要記住剛學(xué)到的知識，最好的方法莫過于睡覺。德國研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，大腦在清醒狀態(tài)下，試圖抵制剛學(xué)到的知識等;而大腦在睡眠狀態(tài)下，更易接收新信息。該研究發(fā)表于《自然神經(jīng)科學(xué)》雜志，這一研究結(jié)果提供了我們記憶接收信息，簡而言之，學(xué)習(xí)這一錯綜復(fù)雜過程新視點(diǎn)。

　　Fresh memories, stored temporarily in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, do not gel immediately, earlier research showed. It was also known that reactivation of those memories soon after learning plays a crucial role in their transfer to more permanent storage in the brain's 'hard drive', the neocortex. During wakefulness, however, this period of reactivation renders the memories more fragile. Learning a second poem at this juncture, for example, will likely make it harder to commit the first one to deep memory.

　　此前，有研究表明，大腦將新記憶暫時儲存在海馬體中，而海馬體不能馬上“吸收”。而想要長期儲存，就需要在接收知識后不斷地刺激，通過這一重要過程，來轉(zhuǎn)化短期記憶為長期記憶，并儲存在新皮質(zhì)。而海馬體在處理短期記憶時，不能做到“及時”處理，特別在大腦清醒狀態(tài)時，海馬體對于激活短期記憶會有“遲鈍”的本能反應(yīng)，在清醒狀態(tài)中，對于暫時學(xué)到的新信息海馬體不能馬上立刻“吸收”。

　　Lead author Dr Susanne Diekelmann said: 'Reactivation of memories had completely different effects on the state of wakefulness and sleep. 'Based on brain imaging data, we suggest the reason for this unexpected result is that already during the first few minutes of sleep, the transfer from hippocampus to neocortex has been initiated.' After only 40 minutes of sleep, significant chunks of memory were already 'downloaded' and stored where they 'could no longer be disrupted by new information that is encoded in the hippocampus', she explained.

　　醫(yī)生Susanne Diekelmann說：“大腦分別在清醒狀態(tài)和混亂狀態(tài)時，處理暫時記憶的效果是大相徑庭的?；谖覀冏钚聦Υ竽X的分析，當(dāng)人在處于輕度睡眠狀態(tài)時，也就是剛進(jìn)入睡眠的前2分鐘，大腦內(nèi)的海馬體向大腦‘硬盤’大腦皮層的轉(zhuǎn)化活動就會被激活，經(jīng)過40分鐘的睡眠，新吸收的知識就會完全‘下載’到大腦硬盤中，成為永久記憶。也就是說，睡眠反而是吸收最新知識的最佳方式!”