To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

　　So you awoke this morning in a miserable mood. Well, maybe your special dream character didn't put in an appearance last night, or maybe there just weren't enough people drifting through your dreams.

　　If that sounds like far-fetched fantasy, consider these interesting findings that have emerged from eight years of sleep and dream research at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio:While sleep affects how sleepy, friendly, aggressive, and unhappy we feel after awakening, feelings of happiness or unhappiness depend most strongly on our dreams.

　　Each of us has a special dream character, a type of person whose appearance in our dreams makes us feel happier when we awake.

　　What we dream at night isn't as important to how we feel in the morning as the number of people who appear in our dreams. The more people, the better we feel.

　　Our sleep influences our mood. Our mood, in turn, affects our performance. And throughout the day, our levels of mood and performance remain closely linked.

　　During the past two decades, research has greatly expanded our knowledge about sleep and dreams. Scientists have identified various stages of sleep, and they have found that humans can function well on very little sleep, but only if they dream. Yet the true function of sleep and dreaming continues to elude precise explanation.

　　In 1970 Milton Kramer and Thomas Roth, researchers at the VA Hospital and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, respectively, raised this question: Do our moods in the morning relate in any way to our sleep and dreams the previous night?

　　Human experience suggests that they do. Certainly we generally feel better after a good night's sleep. But Drs. Kramer and Roth sought a much more definitive answer. And that answer, though still evolving, is positive yes.

　　Kramer and Roth began by seeking to determine whether one's mood differs between night and morning, and whether this is related directly to sleep. They found that there is a difference, and its is definitely related to sleep. Then they explored the various aspects of mood and their relationship to the various stages of sleep and dreaming.

　　What does a good night's sleep mean to our mood? Generally we are happier, less aggressive, sleepier, and a bit surprisingly, less friendly. Being sleepier is easily explained. It simply takes a little time to become fully alert after awakening.

　　But why should we feel less friendly? Here the researchers must speculate a little. They suggest the answer may be the lack of association with other humans during the period of sleep.

　　Once the two doctors established scientifically what common sense and folk wisdom had long taught - namely, that there is link between sleep and how we feel - they set out to learn what parts of our mood are related to which specific parts of the sleep cycle.

　　Normal sleep is broken into five distinct parts - Stages 1 through 4, plus REM, an acronym for rapid eye movement. Much remains unknown about each of the five sleep stages. Most dreaming occurs during REM sleep, a period when the eyeballs move rapidly beneath the closed lids. And whether they remember or not, all adults dream, usually four to six times a night.

　　Three types of mood are strongly related to some specific stage of sleep. Our friendly, aggressive, and sleepy feelings all relate to Stage 2 sleep, which accounts for most of our total sleep hours. Our friendly and sleepy feelings, but not our aggressive feelings, are affected as well by Stages 3 and 4, and by how long it takes us to fall asleep.

　　This means that if you get less sleep than normal - and people vary a great deal in how much sleep they normally require - you awake more friendly, more aggressive, and less sleepy.

　　At this point, the doctors found themselves puzzled. They knew from their earlier work that sleep determines if people feel happier.

　　Yet when they studied the various sleep stages, they found no correlation between sleep physiology and the unhappy mood. Clearly sleep made a difference, but that difference didn't relate to how much time one spent in each of the various sleep stages.

　　The two researchers decided the key to whether we feel happy or unhappy after sleep must lie in sleep's psychological component - our dreams. So they began studying dream content - what dreamers dreamed and who appeared in their dreams - to see how this affected mood.

　　Instead of sleeping through the night, volunteers now were awakened four times while in REM sleep. They were asked about such things as what their dreams were about; the sex, age, identity, and number of the people in their dreams; and what each person in a dream was doing.

　　Interestingly, Kramer and Roth found that being awakened four times a night didn't make a difference in the volunteers' morning mood patterns. But they did find that who appears in a dream has a far greater influence on mood than what occurs in the dream. "Who affects all the moods," Kramer says, "but primarily the unhappy mood."

　　Each of us, it turns out, has a special dream character, and if this type of character appears in our dreams, we are happier when we awake. "For people in general, how unhappy you feel after sleep depends on who is in the dream," Kramer says. "Who it is that makes you happier is different for you than for me." For some it may be an older woman, for example; for others, a young man.

　　Who appears in your dream isn't the only important thing. The more people who appear in your dreams the happier you are on awakening. It's a case of the more the merrier. "The bad thing in a dream is to be alone; you feel worse," Kramer explains. "You can relate this to wakening psychology, where being alone leads to more unhappiness. There is something about interacting with people that produces happiness."

　　A number of researchers have examined the relationship of mood and performance. The doctors also checked into this relationship, and they have found some interesting correlations.
"We found that the more friendly, more aggressive, more clear-thinking, less sleepy, and surprisingly, the more unhappy you are, the better you perform. That last one - the unhappy - I can't explain," Kramer says. Moreover, the level of person's moods and the level of his or her performance rise and fall together throughout the day.

　　Initially the two VA researchers worked only with men, because the dreams of men are far easier to study. Men and women dream differently. Indeed, sex is the biggest factor in accounting for differences in the people activities, locations and feelings that occur in dreams. Dr. Kramer says, "When you compare men and women, you get a greater difference in dream content than when you compare, say, 20- and 60-year-olds, or black and white."

　　Last year the VA researchers began studying the relationship of sleep, dreams, and mood in women. This work is continuing, but the initial findings reinforce what they had found in men.

　　"Overall, the women are just like men," Kramer says.

　　睡覺，偶爾做做夢

　　這么說，你今天早上醒來時心情很糟。唔，或許你的特別的夢中人昨夜未曾入夢來，或許只是沒有足夠的人進入你的夢境。

　　如果那聽起來像靠不住的空想，想一想在俄亥俄州辛辛那提的退伍軍人管理醫(yī)院進行的對睡眠和做夢的八年研究中發(fā)現(xiàn)的有趣結(jié)果吧。

　　雖然睡眠影響我們醒來后是否疲倦、友好、好勝、不開心，感覺開心與否主要在于我們的夢。

　　我們每個人都有一個特別的夢中人，一個在我們的夢中出現(xiàn)、醒來時使我們感覺更開心的人。

　　在夜里夢到什么對于我們早上感覺如何并不比我們夢里出現(xiàn)的人數(shù)更重要。夢中人數(shù)越多，我們感覺越好。

　　夢影響我們的情緒，我們的情緒進而影響我們的行為，一整天，我們情緒高昂亦或低落的行為總是密切相關(guān)。

　　在過去的20年里，研究大大地擴展了我們對睡眠的夢的知識�？茖W(xué)家們已經(jīng)可以識別不同的睡眠階段，而且發(fā)現(xiàn)，人在睡眠很少的情況下，機體仍然很好的運轉(zhuǎn)，但只是在睡眠時做了夢才如此。而睡眠和做夢真正的功能依然得不到準(zhǔn)確的解釋。

　　1970年，VA醫(yī)院和辛辛那提大學(xué)醫(yī)學(xué)院的研究者米爾頓·克萊默和托馬斯·羅斯，分別提出了這個問題：我們早晨的情緒與我們前一天夜里的睡眠和做夢有某種關(guān)系嗎？

　　人們的經(jīng)驗表明它們是有關(guān)系的。當(dāng)然，在一夜足睡的時候，我們一般會感覺良好。但是克萊默和羅斯醫(yī)生發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個更明確的答案，雖然這個答案仍在逐步形成中，但答案確是肯定的。
克萊默和羅斯開始于探求一個人的情緒在早上和晚上是否不同，是否與睡眠有直接關(guān)系。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)確實是不同的，也確實與睡眠有關(guān)。接著，他們研究了情緒的不同方面和它們的睡眠和夢不同階段的關(guān)系。

　　一晚的好覺對我們的心情意味著什么？通常我們會更開心、不那么有攻擊性、更困倦，而且令人感到有點吃驚的是，居然不那么友好。更困倦的容易解釋，只是需要一點時間在醒來后使自己完全清醒。

　　但為什么我們會感到不那么友好呢？這里研究者得做一些推測，他們認(rèn)為答案可能是睡眠期間缺少與他人的交流。

　　兩位醫(yī)生一旦把常識和民間智慧長期教給他們的東西--即睡眠與我們的感覺之間有聯(lián)系--科學(xué)地確定下來，他們就著手了解我們的情緒的哪些部分與睡眠周期的哪些具體部分有關(guān)。

　　正常睡眠可劃分為五個不同部分，從第一階段到第四階段，加上REM。每一個階段都有許多人們未知的知識。大部分的夢發(fā)生在REM睡眠期間，眼球在緊閉的眼瞼下快速移動。不管成年人是否記得，他們都做夢，通常一夜4到6次。三種情緒和睡眠的某一階段緊密相關(guān)。我們友好的、有攻擊性的、困倦和睡眠的某一階段緊密有關(guān)。我們大部分的睡眠在第二階段。我們友好的、困倦的、但沒有攻擊性的睡眠時間也受到第三、第四階段以及我們多久才能入睡的影響。

　　這就意味著如果你比平時睡得少些--在政黨情況下需要多少睡眠，人與人之間是有很大差別的--你醒后就會更加友好、更有攻擊性、少些困倦。

　　在這一點上，醫(yī)生們自己也感到困惑。在他們以前的研究中，他們知道睡眠決定著人們是否會更高興。然而，當(dāng)他們研究各個睡眠階段時，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)在睡眠的生理狀況和憂郁的情緒之間沒有關(guān)系。很顯然，睡眠會帶來差異，但是這種差異與人們花在每一睡眠階段的時間長短沒有關(guān)系。

　　兩位研究者斷言，睡眠以后我們是否感覺高興的關(guān)鍵肯定是取決于睡眠的心理構(gòu)成部分--我們的夢。所以他們就開始研究夢的內(nèi)容：人們夢到了什么、誰大夢中出現(xiàn)--來弄清楚夢會怎樣影響到情緒。
參加試驗的志愿者不能整夜睡眠，相反，在REM睡眠中，他們被喚醒四次，
 

　　然后回答問題，如他們夢的內(nèi)容、夢中人物的性別、年齡、身份和數(shù)量，以及夢中每一個的所作所為。

　　令人感興趣的是，克萊默和羅斯發(fā)現(xiàn)一夜被喚醒四次并沒有使志愿者早上的情緒模式發(fā)生改變。但他們卻發(fā)現(xiàn)誰出現(xiàn)在夢中比夢里發(fā)生什么事對情緒具有非常大的影響。"夢中出現(xiàn)的人物影響著所有的情況，"克萊默說，"但首要的是不高興的情緒。"

　　結(jié)果是我們每一個人都有一個特殊的夢中人物，如果這個人出現(xiàn)在夢中，我們醒后就會感到很高興。"對一般人來說，這個人可能是一位老太太，對另外一些人來講，可能是一位年輕男子。"

　　誰出現(xiàn)在你夢中并不是唯一重要的事情。夢中出現(xiàn)的人物越多，你醒來時就會更加高興。它是一種夢中人愈多愈高興的情況。"夢中如果你孤身一人，你的感覺就不會很好，"克萊默解釋說，"你可以把這一點與人們睡醒時的心理聯(lián)系起來，在剛睡醒的狀態(tài)下孤單一人只會導(dǎo)致較多的不快。這是因為與人交際才能令人高興。"

　　一些研究人員已經(jīng)探討了情緒和行為的關(guān)系，醫(yī)生們也深入研究了這種關(guān)系。而且他們已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)了一些有趣的相互關(guān)系。

　　克萊默說："我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，人越友好、越有銳氣、思維越清晰，也就越一困倦，令人驚奇的是，你越不高興，但是活兒卻干得越好。最后這種情況不高興--我解釋不了。"而且一個人情緒水平和他行為水平在一天中的上下波動總是一致的。

　　最初，退伍軍人管理醫(yī)院的研究只對男人進行了研究，因為男人的夢研究起來容易得多。男人的夢和女人的夢是不同的。的確，在解釋夢中出現(xiàn)的人物、他們的活動、活動地點和他們的感覺差異時，性別是最重要的因素�？巳R默醫(yī)生說："但你對比男人和女人時，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)他們夢的內(nèi)容有很大的不同，這種不同與你比較，比如20歲和60歲的人或者黑人和白人要大得多。"

　　去年，退伍軍人管理醫(yī)院的研究者開始研究婦女的睡眠、做夢和情緒的關(guān)系。這項工作正在繼續(xù)進行，但是一開始的發(fā)現(xiàn)有力地證實了他們在對男人研究時的發(fā)現(xiàn)。

　　"總的來說，男人和女人幾乎沒有什么兩樣，"克萊默說。