解决问题的比较好方法可能是冷静地考虑一下

解决问题的最好方法可能是冷静地考虑一下

You have 99 problems. But if sleep isn’t one of them, you might be in luck.

你有99个问题。但如果睡眠不是其中之一，那你就是幸运的。

It may not seem like it, but your brain does some of its best work while you're sleeping. (Photo: Anusorn Nakdee/Shutterstock)

New research from Northwestern University suggests that the best way to solve a problem may be to sleep on it.

美国西北大学的一项新研究表明，解决问题的最佳方法可能是睡一觉明天再说。

You probably heard that one before. We’re often told that if we can’t seem to think our way out of a challenge, get a good night’s sleep — and look at it with fresh eyes in the morning. That’s assuming, of course, we can get a good sleep when one of life’s riddles is rattling around in our head.

你可能听过这个。我们经常被告知，如果我们不能通过思考来解决挑战，那就睡个好觉，然后在早上用新的眼光来看待它。当然，这是假设，当生活中的一个谜在我们脑海中萦绕时，我们可以先睡个好觉。

Essentially, we take our problems to bed with us. And when we sleep, our brain refines the memory of that problem, bolstering our chances of solving it the next day.

本质上，我们把我们的问题带到床上。当我们睡觉的时候，我们的大脑会提炼出这个问题的记忆，增加我们第二天解决它的机会。

Deciphering riddles with sound

用声音破译谜语

To test that theory, researchers looked at 57 students over the course of three days and two nights. At the outset, they were given a series of demanding problems — spatial and verbal puzzles such as the following, taken directly from the study:

为了验证这一理论，研究人员对57名学生进行了为期三天两夜的研究。一开始，他们被要求回答一系列的问题——空间和语言的难题，比如下面这些直接取自研究的问题:

“On a wall outside a closet door are three standard on/off switches. One (and only one) controls a light bulb inside the light-tight, well-insulated closet. The other two switches do nothing. You can only open the closet door once, and cannot change any switches after the door is open (or re-closed, for that matter). Damaging or disassembling the door, walls, or switches is against the rules. Within these constraints, how can you determine with certainty which switch controls the light bulb?”

壁橱门外的墙上有三个标准的开关。一个(而且只有一个)控制着一个灯泡在不透光、绝缘良好的壁橱里。另外两个开关什么也不做。您只能打开壁橱门一次，并且在门打开(或重新关闭)后不能更改任何开关。损坏或拆卸门、墙或开关是违反规定的。在这些限制条件下，你如何确定哪个开关控制灯泡?”

Don’t worry if you’re already stumped. That’s the idea with this, along with the more than 40 other riddles presented to students.

如果你已经被难住了，不要担心。这就是这个谜语的想法，还有其他40多个谜语呈现给学生。

Crucially, each of those puzzles was presented with a unique snippet of sound. Participants were asked to not only solve each puzzle, but recall the sound that accompanied it.

最重要的是，每个谜题都有一个独特的声音片段。参与者被要求不仅要解决每个难题，还要回忆伴随它的声音。

In all, they managed to decipher all but six puzzles. Those are the ones they went to bed with. They also lugged home sleep-monitoring equipment and a sound system designed to play music while they slumbered. Some of the tracks corresponded with the problems they couldn’t figure out that day.

他们一共破解了6个谜题，是那些带着问题去睡觉的人。他们还随身携带了睡眠监测设备和一个设计用来在他们睡觉时播放音乐的音响系统。有些轨道与那天他们无法解决的问题相对应。

When they woke up, it seemed their brain had spent much of the night weighing those unsolved riddles. The experiment, repeated over the next two days, yielded an eye-opening conclusion:

当他们醒来时，他们的大脑似乎花了一晚上的大部分时间来思考那些未解之谜。在接下来的两天里，这个实验重复了一遍，得出了一个让人大开眼界的结论:

he students were 55% more likely to solve puzzles on their second attempt when they heard the sound clip that was linked to it in their sleep It didn’t matter the kind of puzzle either. Both spatial and verbal riddles were solved at the same success rate.

当学生们在睡梦中听到与之相关的声音片段时，他们在第二次尝试中解决问题的可能性要高出55%。空间谜语和口头谜语都以相同的成功率被解决。

You probably won't make much progress on that problem by staring at it all night. (Photo: DimaBerlin/Shutterstock)

The key may be that stretch of sleep when the brain enters the slow-wave stage — the deepest phase of non-rapid eye movement. That’s long been considered the time when the brain organizes its filing cabinet of memories. It may be a time when the brain takes a fresh approach to a new memory, as it tries to file it in that cabinet.

关键可能是当大脑进入慢波期——非快速眼球运动的最深阶段——睡眠的延长。长久以来，人们一直认为这是大脑整理记忆的时间。这可能是大脑对新记忆采取新方法的时候，因为它试图把它归档。

We know that fresh eyes can solve a particularly confounding problem. But if their research holds true, those eyes may not even have to be open.

我们知道，新鲜的眼光可以解决一个特别复杂的问题。但如果他们的研究是正确的，这些眼睛可能甚至不必睁开。

“This study provides yet more evidence that brain processing during sleep is helpful to daytime cognition,” study co-author and psychology professor Mark Beeman notes in the release.

该研究的合著者、心理学教授马克·比曼在新闻稿中指出:“这项研究提供了更多的证据，证明睡眠期间的大脑处理有助于白天的认知。”

“In this case, if you want to solve problems or make the best decisions, better to sleep on it than to be on Twitter at 3 a.m.”

“在这种情况下，如果你想解决问题或做出最好的决定，最好是先睡一觉，而不是凌晨3点还浏览Twitter。”