夢裏感官:氣味如何影響我們的夢境

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?

你有看着電視睡着，然後夢見自己成了劇中人的經歷嗎？你有和愛人大吵一架，然後夢見自己在夢裏被追打的經歷嗎？你有在玩睡眠派對遊戲的時候，把女生的手放到溫水裏讓她尿牀的經歷嗎？科學家在很久以前就發現睡眠和聲音及其他感覺有關，看到的、聽到的或者記憶中的某些外部刺激會對大多數人的夢境產生影響。那麼，氣味是否也能影響我們的夢境呢？

Rotten Eggs = Rotten Dreams?
臭雞蛋=噩夢？

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).

這一等式可以成立。近期在德國曼海姆的一所大學附屬醫院裏進行了這樣一項研究：兩名睡眠研究人員在實驗室裏對15位女性進行了研究（對女性進行氣味研究更爲理想，因爲研究證明她們的嗅覺器官比男性靈敏得多）。實驗中，研究人員讓不同的氣味飄進熟睡女性的鼻子。

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.

在眼球急速轉動的睡眠初期，夢境最容易產生。研究人員對每位女性進行了三次測試——第一次用了苯乙烯醇，一種類似玫瑰的香味；第二次用硫化氫來模擬臭雞蛋裏的硫化物惡臭；最後一次用了中性的氣味。體驗一分鐘以後，她們被叫醒，詢問實驗過程中的夢境。

Curious Conclusions
有趣的結論

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.

最有趣的發現在於參與實驗的女性們並沒有出現絕對意義上的美夢或者噩夢——沒有人做太恐怖的夢，也沒有人夢見和喬治·克魯尼共赴夏威夷。但是，氣味在很大程度上影響了她們對夢境的感覺。研究人員發現在被喚醒後，聞過芳香氣味的女性都說做了美夢，而另一部分則說夢境很糟糕。儘管氣味不見得能改變夢境，但是它能夠改變做夢的人的主觀感受

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.

如果你睡覺的房間裏有響着的鬧鐘和打鼾的伴侶，嘈雜聲通常會潛入你的大腦，但是大多數女性在研究過程中忘記了自己是在特殊氣味作用下做的夢。這一有趣的現象似乎意味着氣味在影響夢境過程中不同於其他感覺。

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.

這只是一項小研究，到目前爲止還沒有別的研究人員驗證這些研究成果，所以很難對氣味是否影響夢境下定論。而且，除了臭雞蛋和玫瑰以外還有許許多多形形色色的氣味。當然，如果你時常做噩夢的話，可以檢查下房子周圍是否潛藏着盜夢的氣味元兇。至少，這給在睡覺前烤一爐碎巧克力餅乾提供了一大理由。