【每天一篇经济学人】Sleepy heads 瞌睡虫（2023年第55期）

文章来源：《经济学人》Oct 14th 2023 期 Culture 栏目 Sleepy heads 瞌睡虫

文章主题：我们为什么要睡觉？以及其他未解之谜！

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Birds do it. Bees do it. People do it, though often less than they would like to. Owls do it in the daytime. Even Caenorhabditis elegans, a primitive roundworm made up of a few thousand cells, does something that looks an awful lot like it. Sleep is an ancient, universal experience.

鸟类要睡觉。蜜蜂要睡觉。人们要睡觉，尽管睡眠往往不如他们所愿。猫头鹰在白天要睡觉。就连由几千个细胞组成的原始蛔虫--秀丽隐杆线虫，也会有类似的睡眠活动。睡眠是一种古老而普遍的体验。

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But partly because it is so commonplace, for a long time sleep was a subject that scientists had not woken up to. It is only in the past half-century or so that it has attracted the attention of dedicated researchers. A new book from Kenneth Miller, a science journalist, sets out to chronicle the field’s short but fascinating history.

然而，部分原因是由于睡眠如此普遍，在很长一段时间里，科学家们并未对睡眠这个课题产生兴趣。直到最近半个多世纪，它才引起了专门研究者的注意。科普记者肯尼思·米勒的这本新书详细记录了睡眠领域短暂但迷人的历史。

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The book is organised around the life and hard work of four scientists. The patriarch of the field is Nathaniel Kleitman, whose presence looms largest. A Jewish man born in what is now Moldova, he emigrated to America in 1915, escaping Russian pogroms before setting up a pioneering sleep-research programme at the University of Chicago.

这本书围绕4位科学家的生活和辛勤工作展开。睡眠领域的元老人物是纳撒尼尔·克莱特曼，他的影响力最为显着。他是一位出生在今摩尔多瓦的犹太人，1915 年为躲避俄国战乱移居美国，之后在芝加哥大学建立了一个开创性的睡眠研究项目。

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The early pages of the book, before there is much in the way of established science to describe, are the weakest. A good deal of time is spent on biographical details and pen portraits of the world through which Kleitman moved. But the story soon picks up. It roams from the discovery of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and circadian rhythms—the biological clocks that govern humanity’s days—to the effects of sleep deprivation (which can be fatal, at least in lab animals). It also probes the purpose, if any, of dreams.

本书的开头几页，在描述已确立的科学内容之前，是关联性最弱的部分。大量篇幅用在描写传记细节和克莱特曼所行走的世界。但故事很快回归主题了。本书涵盖了快速眼动 (REM) 睡眠、昼夜节律（这是控制人类一天生活的生物钟）的发现、以及睡眠剥夺的影响（这可能是致命的，至少对实验室动物来说是致命的）。本书还探讨了梦境的目的（如果有梦境存在的话）。

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Underlying it all is a sense of psychology’s slow maturing as a science. New technologies such as electroencephalographs, which monitor electrical activity in the brain, have offered practitioners the ability to study brains directly, rather than trying to infer what they are doing from the behaviour of their owners.

睡眠研究的背后，也有心理学的的影响。心理学在逐渐成为一门成熟的科学。脑电图仪等新技术可以监测大脑中的电活动，使从业者能够直接研究大脑，而不是从大脑主人的行为中推断大脑发生了什么变化。

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Mr Miller has a good eye for a great scientific story. One of Kleitman’s best-known experiments involved spending 32 days in a dark cave as he worked to shed light on the limits of the body’s inbuilt circadian clock. The author is happy to show research as it is really done, indignities and all.

米勒对于伟大的科学故事有着敏锐的洞察力。克莱特曼最著名的实验之一是他在黑暗的洞穴中生活了32天，以揭示人体内置生物钟的极限。作者乐于展示研究的真实过程，包括其中的尴尬和不体面之处。

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One section describes a more modern, quantitative sort of circadian-rhythm research that took place in a purpose-built facility in a Bavarian village. The lab sported two apartments, with no window or clocks to clue their occupants into what was happening outside. Test subjects lived there for weeks, free to wake and doze whenever they liked—but never free from the rectal thermometers that were attached to wall sockets by long cables.

其中一章描述了一种更现代、更量化的昼夜节律研究，该研究是在巴伐利亚村庄的一个专门建造的实验设施中进行的。实验室有两间公寓，没有窗户，也没有钟表，因此居住者无法了解外面发生的情况。受试者在那里住了几个星期，他们想睡就睡，想醒就醒--但他们必须用墙壁插座上的直肠温度计量体温。

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There is a serious side, too. Shift work interferes with the body’s internal clocks and raises the risk of illness, including heart disease and diabetes. Mr Miller explains medicine’s slow recognition of sleep apnea, a common affliction, and the damage it can inflict. It is caused by the airway repeatedly collapsing during sleep. Sufferers endure hundreds of episodes of oxygen deprivation every night (the characteristic gasping and snorting comes when a bodily reflex forces sleepers to take a desperate breath of air).

睡眠也有严肃的一面。轮班工作会干扰人体的生物钟，增加患心脏病和糖尿病等疾病的风险。米勒解释说，医学界对睡眠呼吸暂停这种常见疾病的认识非常缓慢，而且这种疾病会造成严重损害。睡眠呼吸暂停是由于睡眠过程中气道反复塌陷造成的。患者每晚都要忍受数百次的缺氧（当身体反射迫使睡眠者拼命呼吸空气时，就会出现特有的喘息声和呼噜声）。

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If left untreated, sleep apnea can lead to crippling exhaustion or worse. Mr Miller relates the case of a brother and sister who both suffered from the condition. The brother was eventually cured by having a small hole cut in his throat, but years of oxygen deprivation at night had caused irreversible brain damage in his sister.

如果不及时治疗，睡眠呼吸暂停可能会导致严重疲劳，甚至更糟的后果。米勒提到了一对兄妹都罹患这种病的案例。哥哥最终通过在喉咙上开一个小孔而痊愈，但多年的夜间缺氧给妹妹造成了不可逆转的脑损伤。

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Discoveries often lead to new questions in turn. That is why neat, tidy endings are hard to achieve in science books; this one is no different. Despite all the progress of the past 50 years, scientists are still unsure what sleep is for. The fact it is so widespread suggests it is vital. But why evolution would see fit to produce animals that must spend large amounts of their time insensate and unable to respond to threats is still a mystery researchers are trying to solve. For anyone curious about asking the right questions, however, Mr Miller’s book is a good place to start.

新研究往往又会引发新的问题。这就是为什么科普书籍很难有完美的结尾；这本书也不例外。尽管过去 50 年取得了诸多进步，但科学家们仍然不清楚睡眠到底有什么用。睡眠如此广泛存在的事实表明它至关重要。但是，为什么进化过程中会产生这样的动物，他们必须花费大量的时间昏睡，无法对威胁做出反应，这仍然是研究人员试图解开的一个谜。不过，对于任何想提出正确问题的人来说，米勒的书是一个很好的起点。