德研究：睡房放花助發甜夢

(明報)9月23日 星期二 05:10
【明報專訊】經常發噩夢？試試在睡房放些鮮花吧！德國 研究人員邀請15名女子作氣味測試，再分析她們30日的睡眠狀况。
負面氣味負面情緒有關係
研究人員在這群女子進入「快速動眼睡眠」（淺睡期）狀態，即開始發夢時，將爛蛋、玫瑰的氣味，又或者沒氣味的空氣，輸送入她們的鼻子10秒。在她們起來後，就記錄發過什麼夢。
結果發現，這些氣味影響她們發夢時的情緒，但並沒有成為夢的一部分，即儘管她們嗅到玫瑰香味，卻沒有做跟玫瑰有關的夢。但研究同時發現，負面氣味和負面情緒卻有一定關係。研究人員說，對那些長期受噩夢困擾的人來說，研究結果非常有趣，因為正面的氣味可以改善睡眠情緒，達到治療效果。
每日電訊報



Sweet smells foster sweet dreams

Sleep with flowers in your bedroom if you want sweet dreams, work suggests.
When the smell of roses had been wafted under the noses of slumbering volunteers they reported experiencing pleasant emotions in their dreams.
An odour of rotten eggs had the opposite effect on the 15 sleeping women, the German scientists found.
They told a Chicago meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology that they now plan to study people who suffer from nightmares.
Sweet dreams
It is possible that exposure to smells might help make their dreams more pleasant, believe Professor Boris Stuck and his team from the University Hospital Mannheim.
They waited until their subjects had entered the REM phase of sleep, the stage at which most dreams occur, and then exposed them to a high dose of smelly air for 10 seconds before waking them up one minute later.


"Smell is the only sense that doesn't 'sleep' "
Professor Tim Jacob, an expert in smell and taste at Cardiff University


The volunteers were then quizzed about the content of their dreams and asked how it made them feel.
The sleeping women hardly ever dreamed of smelling something. Nevertheless, the emotional tone of the dream did change depending on the stimulation.
Previous research has shown that other types of stimulation, such as sound, pressure or vibration, can influence the content and the emotional tone of dreams.
Dr Irshaad Ebrahim of The London Sleep Centre said: "The relationship between external stimuli and dreaming is something we are all at some level aware of.
"This initial research is a step in the direction towards clarifying these questions and may well lead to therapeutic benefits."
Professor Tim Jacob, an expert in smell and taste at Cardiff University, said: "Smell is the only sense that doesn't 'sleep'. Information continues to reach the limbic system of the brain and that includes the hippocampus, or memory area and the amygdala, that is involved with emotional response.
"Other senses have to pass through the 'gate' of the thalamus, which is closed when we sleep."

Story from BBC

NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7628744.stm

Published: 2008/09/22 09:08:00 GMT© BBC MMVIII