健忘症！别慌，好好睡一觉再说

Forgetfulness. It's a sure sign that we're getting older. We forget where we parked, forget to bring our coupons to the store or forget why we came to the store in the first place. But what if all of those memory lapses are less a sign of old age than they are a sign of poor sleep?

健忘常常被认为是变老的征兆之一。取车时会忘记车停在那儿了，结账时会忘记带优惠券了，甚至有时候会忘记我们到底为什么要去商店。如果这些表现不是意味着你变老了，而是更多地意味着缺少合适的睡眠呢?

A new study published in the journal Neuron has found that the brain waves of older adults become out of sync during sleep. And these brain waves may play a critical role in the ability to download new memories. It may not be the sheer act of aging that is causing us to forget; it may be brain waves that lose their rhythm over time.

《神经元》杂志上的一项新研究发现，在睡梦中，老年人的脑电波变得不再同步，而这些脑电波关系着记忆新事物的能力。或许我们记忆力下降不是因为变老了，而是因为脑电波的节奏乱了。

A good night's sleep

睡个好觉

For the study, a team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley conducted two tests. First, they recruited 20 young adults and asked them to learn 120 pairs of words. Then they let them go to sleep while monitoring their brain waves. Electrodes were used to measure two types of brain waves; slow waves, which fire about every second, and fast waves, called sleep spindles, which occur about 12 times each second.

加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校的一组研究人员针对此进行了两次测试。他们找来了20名年轻人，先让他们学习120对单词，再让他们睡觉，睡觉时检测他们的脑电波。他们用电极测量两种类型的脑电波：慢波差不多每秒1次，而快波，也就是我们熟知的睡眠纺锤波，大约每秒12次。

When the researchers evaluated the young adults the next morning, they found a correlation between the rhythm of these brain waves and the participants' ability to remember the newly acquired information (in this case, the 120 pairs of words.) Those whose fast and slow waves were synchronized remembered more pairs of words than those who did not.

第二天早上，研究人员对这些年轻人进行了评估，发现这些脑电波的节奏与参与者记下新知识的能力有关(在本次研究中，指的是120对单词)。相对快波慢波不同步的人，同步者记住的单词数量更多。

For the second test, researchers repeated the experiment but this time they recruited 32 people in their 60s and 70s. Once again, the participants whose fast and slow waves were in-sync had an easier time remembering the word pairs. But researchers found that the brain waves of these older participants were less synchronized overall.

第二次实验，内容与第一次相同。但这次研究人员找的人是32个60-70岁之间的人。当然，也再次证明了同步者比非同步者记忆单词的能力更强。除此之外，他们还发现老年人的脑电波同步情况不如年轻人那么好。

As you can imagine, it doesn't take much for these brain waves to step out of rhythm.

所以可想而知，脑电波的节奏失调实在是太常见了。

"If you're like 50 milliseconds too early, 50 milliseconds too late, then the storing mechanism actually doesn't work," Randolph Helfrich a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkley and one of the authors of the study told NPR.

“如果你觉得50毫秒太早，或者太晚，这可能就说明你大脑内的存储机制并没有发挥作用。” Randolph Helfrich说。他是伯克利分校的博士后研究员之一。

Regaining your rhythm

恢复节奏

Why do the brain waves get out-of-sync as we age? Helfrich and his team think it might have to do with atrophy that occurs in the section of the brain that aids in deep sleep. The more atrophy they noted in the participants, the more out of sync their brain waves were and the more difficulty they had remembering new information.

为什么随着年龄的增长脑电波会变得不同步?Helfrich认为可能与大脑中控制深度睡眠区的萎缩有关。参与者的萎缩情况越厉害，脑电波就越难以同步，记忆东西也就越难了。

The good news is that if it is in fact out of sync brain waves that hamper memory, researchers may be able to develop a treatment using electrical or magnetic pulses to stimulate the activity in this area of the brain and get those waves firing in sync again.

但好消息是，如果真的是不同步的脑电波导致了记忆力衰退，研究人员可能研发出一种利用电脉冲或磁脉冲来刺激大脑中这部分区域的技术，使得慢波快波再次同步起来。

"The idea is to boost those brain waves and bring them back together," Helfrich said.Potentially, this could help older adults who are having trouble with memory loss as well as those suffering from dementia or other conditions that involve memory impairment.

“我们目前的想法是促进脑电波的发射，并让他们再次同步。” Helfrich说。对那些失忆的年轻人、患有痴呆症的人等记忆方面存在问题的人群来说，这可能是一个福音。

We don't need the fountain of youth. We just need to get our rhythm back.

我们不需要青春永驻，只需要脑电波的同步，节奏的恢复。