2020年07月四级第1套仔细阅读 Passage 2 原文翻译及答案解析

It's late in the evening: time to close the book and turn off the computer. You're done for the day. What you may not realize, however, is that the learning process actually continues—in your dreams.

晚上时间不早了：是时候合上书本、关掉电脑了。你今天的工作已经结束。然而，你可能没有意识到的是，学习过程实际上还在继续——在你的梦中。

It might sound like science fiction, but researchers are increasingly focusing on the relationship between the knowledge and skills our brains absorb during the day and the fragmented, often bizarre imaginings they generate at night. Scientists have found that dreaming about a task we've learned is associated with improved performance in that activity (suggesting that there's some truth to the popular notion that we're "getting" a foreign language once we begin dreaming in it). What's more, researchers are coming to recognize that dreaming is an essential part of understanding, organizing and retaining what we learn.

这听起来可能像科幻小说，但研究者们正日益关注大脑白天吸收的知识和技能与夜间产生的碎片化、常常怪异的想象之间的关系。科学家发现，梦见我们学过的任务与在该活动中的表现提升有关（这表明，我们开始用外语做梦时就表示正在"掌握"这门外语的流行观念是有一定道理的）。更重要的是，研究者开始认识到，做梦是理解、组织和保留所学内容的重要组成部分。

While we sleep, research indicates, the brain replays the patterns of activity it experienced during waking hours, allowing us to enter what one psychologist calls a neural (神经的) virtual reality. A vivid example of such replay can be seen in a video researchers made recently about sleep disorders. They taught a series of dance moves to a group of patients with conditions like sleepwalking, in which the sleeper engages in the kind physical movement that does not normally occur during sleep. They then videotaped the subjects as they slept. Lying in bed, eyes closed, one female patient on the tape performs the dance moves she learned earlier.

研究表明，当我们睡眠时，大脑会重放它在清醒时经历的活动模式，让我们进入一位心理学家所称的神经虚拟现实。这种重放的一个生动例子可以在研究者最近制作的一个关于睡眠障碍的视频中看到。他们教了一组患有梦游等疾病的患者一系列舞蹈动作，梦游症患者会在睡眠中进行通常不会发生的身体运动。然后，他们在患者睡眠时进行录像。视频中，一名女患者躺在床上，闭着眼睛，表演她早先学到的舞蹈动作。

This shows that while our bodies are at rest, our brains are drawing what's important from the information and events we've recently encountered, then integrating that data into the vast store of what we already know. In a 20l0 study, researchers at Harvard Medical School reported that college students who dreamed about a computer maze (迷宫) task they had learned showed a l0-fold improvement in their ability to find their way through the maze compared with participants who did not dream about the task.

这表明，当我们的身体休息时，大脑正在从我们最近遇到的信息和事件中提取重要内容，然后将这些数据整合到我们已有的庞大知识库中。在2010年的一项研究中，哈佛医学院的研究者报告称，梦见自己学过的电脑迷宫任务的大学生，与没有梦见该任务的参与者相比，通过迷宫的能力提高了10倍。

Robert Stickgold, one of the Harvard researchers, suggests that studying right before bedtime or taking a nap following a study session in the afternoon might increase the odds of dreaming about the material. Think about that as your head hits the pillow tonight.

哈佛研究者之一罗伯特·斯蒂克戈尔德建议，睡前立即学习或下午学习后小睡一会儿，可能会增加梦见学习材料的概率。今晚头枕枕头时，想想这一点吧。