電子閱讀設備是如何“殺死”你的睡眠的

Bedtime reading with a tablet or smartphone can interfere with a good night’s sleep, some studies and many anecdotal reports suggest. Now researchers have conducted a small experiment to test the idea.

一些研究和個案報告表明，使用平板電腦或手機進行睡前閱讀可能會影響睡眠質(zhì)量。研究人員進行了一個小實驗來驗證這一說法。

Scientists had nine people spend 10 nights in a sleep laboratory. For five consecutive nights, they read before sleep with an iPad; then they read print for five nights. In both scenarios, they read in a dimly lit room until they felt ready to go to sleep.

科學家讓九人在睡眠實驗室中度過了10個晚上。他們將連續(xù)五個夜晚使用iPad進行睡前閱讀，接下來的五個夜晚，他們會閱讀印刷品。兩種情況下，他們都會在光線昏暗的房間里閱讀，直到他們感覺已準備好入睡。

The experiment, described in Physiological Reports, found that when people used iPads instead of reading print, they selected a later bedtime and had a later sleep onset. They also had suppressed levels of melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep, and delayed time to melatonin secretion. Periods of REM sleep — the rapid eye movements of the dreaming stage of sleep — were reduced when they used the iPad rather than printed material.

根據(jù)《生理學報告》(Physiological Reports)中的描述，該實驗發(fā)現(xiàn)，當人們讀的是iPad而非印刷品時，他們的就寢時間更晚，且更晚入睡。他們調(diào)節(jié)睡眠的荷爾蒙——褪黑素水平受到抑制，分泌時間延緩。而當他們使用iPad而非印刷材料時，REM睡眠時段——也就是睡眠中做夢時的快速眼動階段——會縮短。

The volunteers also reported feeling less sleepy in the evening, and less alert in the morning after using the electronic device.

志愿者還報告說，在使用電子設備后，他們感覺到晚上的困意減少，早上也沒那么清醒。

“These devices are not benign,” said a co-author of the study, Jeanne F. Duffy, a neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “They have biological effects on us. They can be bad for adults, but really bad for kids and adolescents who already don’t get enough sleep.”

“這些設備不是良性的，”該研究的共同作者、波士頓布萊根婦女醫(yī)院(Brigham and Women’s Hospital)的神經(jīng)學家珍妮·F·達菲(Jeanne F. Duffy)說。“它們對我們有著生物效應。它們對成人有害，但對孩子和已經(jīng)缺乏睡眠的青少年來說更是有害。”