译文Why We Sleep A Biological Perspective.doc

Reading 3 ?Why We Sleep: A Biological Perspective 从生物学角度考察人类为什么要睡眠 By Jerome M. Siegel ?Section 1 1 Birds do it, bees do it, and even fruit flies appear to do it. Humans certainly do it. The subject is not love, but sleep. Shakespeares Macbeth said it “knits up the raveled sleeve of care” and was the balm of hurt minds, great natures second course, chief nourisher in lifes feast. Cervantess Sancho Panza sang its praises as the food that cures all hunger, the water that quenches all thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that cools the heart... the balancing weight that levels the shepherd with the king, and the simple with the wise. 鸟儿/蜜蜂儿/甚至是苍蝇儿都需要睡觉,人类当然也需要睡觉.本主题所谈论的非爱情,而是睡眠.莎士比亚说,那是”织补关照的袖口”和那是”心灵慰藉,自然的赋予,生命的滋养”科文特斯.伯查却赞歌”食足肚饿,水慰口渴,火暧冬寒,寒静热血......这均衡的赐予抚平了牧人与国王的差别,抚平了愚者与智者的差别.” 2 The simple and the wise have long contemplated two related questions: What is sleep, and why do we need it? An obvious answer to the latter is that adequate sleep is necessary to stay alert and awake. That response, however, dodges the issue and is the equivalent of saying that you eat to keep from being hungry or breathe to ward off feelings of suffocation. The real function of eating is to supply nutrients, and the function of breathing is to take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. But we have no comparably straightforward explanation for sleep. That said, sleep research --- less than a century old as a focused field of scientific inquiry --- has generated enough insight for investigators to at least make reasonable proposals about the function of the somnolent state that consumes one third of our lives. ?人们长期关注着两个相关的问题:什么是睡眠,为什么要睡眠?一个最新的答案是:睡眠是为了保持警觉和清醒的需要.然后,这个答案回避了问题本身,如同说吃饭是为了充饥,呼吸是为了免除窒息一样.其实,吃饭的作用是提供营养,呼吸的作用是吸入氧气和呼出二氧化碳.但我们没有同样地直接回答睡眠是为了什么.也就是说, 人们对睡眠的研究,在不到一个世纪以来将之作为一个重要的研究领域已经进行了充分的探究,至少对于这一占去人生三分之一的睡眠的功能提出了合理的解释. Section 2 ?What is sleep? 3 Despite the difficulty in strictly defining sleep, an observer can usually tell when a subject is sleeping: the sleeper