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感冒发烧时很难好好休息，这其中有很多原因。当你鼻塞、不停咳嗽或还伴有其他难以忍受的症状时，想要睡个好觉是很难的。发烧时会更加难以保障高质量的睡眠，还有一个原因是发烧时经常会做一些奇怪诡异的梦。那么为什么发烧会引发奇怪的噩梦？对此科学家们有一些猜测。

Getting a solid night’s rest when you’re sick can seem like an unattainable goal for any number of reasons. It’s difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep when you’re plagued by a stuffy nose, a ceaseless cough, or some combination of those and other intolerable symptoms.

生病时似乎很难安睡一夜，这其中有很多原因。当你鼻塞、不停咳嗽或还伴有其他难以忍受的症状时，就会难以入睡且容易醒来。

Fevers can make quality sleep even harder, thanks in part to fever dreams: especially vivid, weird, or downright disturbing dreams that occur when you have a fever. As the Sleep Foundation explains, fever dreams sometimes involve “spatial distortion,” such as moving walls and melting objects; “threats or danger,” which can be anything from insects to terrorists; and illness. If you were to have a dream fitting this description when you weren’t sick, you might just write it off as a garden-variety nightmare. But since people seem to experience such strange dreams more often during fevers, it’s given rise to the idea that the two things must be linked.

发烧时更难保障高质量的睡眠，部分原因是“发烧梦”，它尤其指当你发烧时会出现的生动、怪异或令人不安的梦。睡眠基金会解释称，“发烧梦”里有时会出现“空间扭曲”，例如移动的墙壁和融化的物体；“威胁或危险”，如昆虫、恐怖分子等各种元素；以及疾病。如果你在没生病时做了一个符合上述特征的梦，你可能会把它当作一场普通的噩梦。但由于人们似乎在发烧时更经常做这种奇怪的梦，因此会认为两者之间一定存在联系。

While there’s a lot about fever dreams we don’t know, there is at least a little evidence supporting the theory that some people’s fever dreams are different from their regular dreams. In one retrospective study from 2016, researchers asked 62 people to describe past fever dreams and found them to be “more bizarre, more emotionally intense, and often negatively toned than [regular] dream[s] from an age- and gender matched sample.”Of the 164 people who participated in a 2020 survey, 100 reported fever dreams. The researchers noted that these dreams “included more references to health and temperature perception compared to ‘normal’ most recent dreams.”

我们对“发烧梦”的了解并不多，但一些人的“发烧梦”与他们平时做的梦不同，至少关于这一点是有据可循的。在2016年的一项回顾性研究中，研究人员要求62人描述曾经做过的“发烧梦”，结果发现，这些梦境“比年龄和性别匹配的研究样本做的（普通）梦更奇怪，情绪更强烈，而且往往是消极的”。在2020年一项164人参与的调查中，有100人报告做过“发烧梦”。研究人员指出，“与近期‘寻常’的梦境相比，这些梦出现了更多关于健康和温度感知的内容”。

As for why fevers beget bizarre nightmares, scientists have some ideas.“[One] theory is that the brain doesn’t process sensations normally when we have a fever,” Dr. Beth Malow, director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s sleep division, told Healthin 2020. So burning up in your bed might just manifest itself in a dream full of melting objects and seemingly unrelated perils.

至于为什么发烧会引发奇怪的噩梦，科学家们有一些猜测。2020年，范德比尔特大学医学中心睡眠科主任贝思·马洛博士在接受《健康》杂志采访时称，“有一种理论认为，当我们发烧时，大脑无法正常处理感觉。”因此，睡觉时发烧，感觉到的可能只会是一个充满融化的物体和看似无关的危险梦境。

The reason fever dreams seem so vivid could be related to fever’s tendency to interfere with REM sleep: the period of deepest sleep during which most dreams occur. As Dr. Alcibiades Rodriguez, medical director of NYU Langone Health’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center-Sleep Center, told Health, “If we get a spike in fever during REM sleep, we may feel more uncomfortable and have micro-arousals (shifts between deep and light sleep). This increases the likelihood of us remembering our dreams.”

“发烧梦”如此逼真的原因可能与发烧有干扰快速眼动睡眠的倾向有关。快速眼动睡眠是最深的睡眠期，大多数梦都是在这一时期发生的。纽约大学朗格尼医学中心癫痫-睡眠综合中心医学主任阿尔西比亚德斯·罗德里格斯博士告诉《健康》杂志，“如果我们在快速眼动睡眠期间发烧，可能会感到更不舒服，并产生微觉醒（深浅睡眠之间的转换）。这增加了我们记住梦的可能性。”

来源：Mental Floss

编辑：董静

来源：chinadaily.com.cn