Getting Enough Sleep? Dream onIs eight hours sleep enough to everyone? Have you ever heard of sleep debt? The following article warns us of the consequences of sleep deprivation and suggests ways to work off sleep debt. 八小时的睡眠是不是对每个人都充裕？你听说过“睡眠债” 吗？下面这篇文章提醒我们睡眠不足的后果，建议我们如何偿还睡眠债。 I once had a patient who was so sleep-deprived that she loaded her dirty dishes into the clothes dryer instead of the dishwasher. She turned on the machine, smashing china and glasses. 我曾经有过一位病人，她由于睡眠严重不足，竟把脏碟子放进了干衣机，而不是放进洗碗机里面。她扭开干衣机的开关，哗啦啦，瓷器和玻璃器皿撞成了碎片。Another patient went to great lengths to obtain a 50-yard-line ticket to a crucial San Francisco 49ers play-off game, but was so sleepy that he dozed off in his seat in the first quarter and stayed asleep until the game was over. 还有一位病人费了九牛二虎之力才弄到一张五十码线门票，观看旧金山 49 淘金人协会举行的一场至为关键的加时赛，但他实在太疲倦了，头一段比赛就在座位上睡着了，一直睡到比赛结束才醒。On an everyday level, sleepy people make math errors, break things and become cross with their families, friends and co-workers. Less commonly, they make mistakes with tragic consequences. It is hard to prove how many fatal car accidents are caused by the drivers falling asleep, but my conviction is that the number is high. Laboratory experiments have confirmed that the sleep-deprived mind is prone to microsleeps lapses of consciousness so brief that the subject may not even be aware of them. 几乎每天，打瞌睡的人会犯数学错误，打坏东西，或向家人、朋友和同事发火。瞌睡者因犯错而导致可悲后果的情况并不常见。很难证实，有多少起致命的车祸是由于驾驶员瞌睡引起的，但是，我相信，这个数目一定不小。实验室的试验已经证实，缺少睡眠的大脑很容易进入“短暂的昏睡” 阵发性的意识丧失，这种意识丧失的时间短得甚至连当事人都可能意识不到。In one experiment in our laboratory at Stanford University, a volunteer who had only been allowed four hours sleep the night before had his eyelids taped open (uncomfortable, but it doesnt hurt). He was asked to press a button every time an irregular strobe light flashed. For a few minutes he tapped the switch after each flash, on average every six seconds. Then a bright flash surged into his pupils but he did nothing. 在斯坦福大学实验室进行的一项实验中，只让一名自愿者前一天晚上睡四个小时，然后把他的眼睑固定，让他睁着眼睛， （这样做虽不舒服，但并无损害） 。按照要求，每当频闪闪光灯无规律地闪光之时，他必须揿下一个按钮。最初几分钟，每闪一次他揿一下按钮，平均每六秒钟一次。而后，一道强光照入他的眼球但是，他一动没动。Why didnt you press the switch just now? we asked. Because there was no flash, the young man replied. The machines we used to monitor brain activity showed that at the very moment the light had flashed, the young man had unwittingly fallen asleep, with his eyes wide open, for two seconds. If he had been behind the wheel of a car, those two seconds could have meant disaster. “刚才你为什么不揿按钮？” 我们问他。 “没有闪光啊?”年轻人回答说。监控大脑活动的机器表明，就在灯光闪烁的那一刻，这位年轻人已经睁着双眼不知不觉地睡着了，睡了两秒钟。倘若他当时是在开车，这两秒钟可能就意味着灾难。Societal pressures to work more and at odd hours have reduced our sleep time over the past century by about 20 percent. Add to the mix our own eras drive to have and do it all work, family, sports, hobbies and there is very little time left for rest. I consider sleep deprivation a national emergency. 上个世纪，迫于社会压力，我们不得不加班加点，睡眠时间减少了约 20。我们这个时代充满着各种欲望：工作，家庭，运动，业余爱好等等，使这种忙乱有增无减。因此，休息时间便所剩无几了。我认为睡眠缺失是国家的紧急情况。Sleep Debt and the Mortgaged Mind 睡眠债与抵押的大脑Generally, adults need to sleep one hour for every two hours awake, which means that most need about eight hours of sleep a night. Of course, some people need more and some less. Children and teenagers need an average of about ten hours. The brain keeps an exact accounting of how much sleep it is allowed. My colleagues and I coined the term sleep debt because accumulated lost sleep is like a monetary debt: it must be paid back. If you get an hour less than a full nights sleep, you carry an hour of sleep debt into the next day and your tendency to fall asleep during the daytime becomes stronger.一般说来，成人每清醒两小时就需要一小时的睡眠，这就意味着大多数人每晚需要八个小时的睡眠。当然，有人需要的多些，有人需要的少些。儿童和青少年平均需要十个小时的睡眠时间。大脑对应有的睡眠量做出准确的计算。我和同事们杜撰了“睡眠债” 这个词 - 睡眠缺失积累下来，就像债务一样：必须得到偿还。倘若某个晚上少睡一小时，一小时的睡眠债就被带到第二天，白天越来越想睡觉。During a five-day workweek, if you got six hours of sleep each night instead of the eight you needed, you would build up a sleep debt of ten hours (five days times two hours). Because sleep debt accumulates in additive fashion, by day five your brain would tend toward sleep as strongly as if youd stayed up all night. From this perspective, sleeping until noon on Saturday is not enough to pay back the ten lost hours as well as meet your nightly requirement of eight; you would have to sleep until 5 p.m. to balance the sleep ledger. But for most people it is difficult to sleep that long because of the alerting mechanism of our biological clock. 在每周五天的工作日里，倘若每晚只睡六小时，而不是所需的八小时，你就欠下了十个小时的睡眠债（5 天2 小时） 。由于睡眠债是以累积的方式攒下的，到了第五天，你的大脑会非常想睡觉，就好像你整夜未眠似的。从这个角度说，周六睡到中午并不能满足每晚八小时的睡眠需要，也不够偿还缺失的十小时睡眠；只有睡到下午 5 点才能保持这本睡眠帐的平衡。然而，对大多数人来说，由于我们生物钟的警醒机制，我们很难睡那么长的时间。Wide Awake but Not Rested 睡意全无却没有得到休息An amazingly precise biological clock within us regulates sleeping and waking, and also synchronizes a vast array of biochemical events in our bodies. It is a timepiece of such astonishing precision that people often wake up a few minutes before their a