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Have you ever fallen asleep with the television on and then had a dream that you were part of the show? Or gone to sleep after a big fight with your significant other and then had a dream where you were being chased? Or played the slumber party game where you put one girl’s hand in a cup of warm water and tried to make her wet the bed? Scientists have known for a long time that there’s some kind of relationship between our dreams and the sounds and sensations happening around us and most of us have had a dream where some external stimulus—a sight, a sound, a memory—seemed to be an influence. What if different smells can influence our dreams, too?
你有看着电视睡着，然后梦见自己成了剧中人的经历吗？你有和爱人大吵一架，然后梦见自己在梦里被追打的经历吗？你有在玩睡眠派对游戏的时候，把女生的手放到温水里让她尿床的经历吗？科学家在很久以前就发现睡眠和声音及其他感觉有关，看到的、听到的或者记忆中的某些外部刺激会对大多数人的梦境产生影响。那么，气味是否也能影响我们的梦境呢？
Rotten Eggs = Rotten Dreams?
臭鸡蛋=噩梦？
They just might be able to. In a recent German study at the University Hospital, Mannheim, two sleep researchers did an experiment where they wafted different smells under the noses of fifteen women sleeping in a lab (women are ideal for studies on smell, since research has shown that their olfactory senses are notably keener than men’s).
这一等式可以成立。近期在德国曼海姆的一所大学附属医院里进行了这样一项研究：两名睡眠研究人员在实验室里对15位女性进行了研究（对女性进行气味研究更为理想，因为研究证明她们的嗅觉器官比男性灵敏得多）。实验中，研究人员让不同的气味飘进熟睡女性的鼻子。
While in REM sleep, the phase where dreams are most likely to occur, each woman in the study was tested three times—once with phenyl ethyl alcohol, a scent resembling roses; once with hydrogen sulfide, which mimics the sulfurous stench of rotten eggs; and once with a neutral scent. A minute after being exposed to the odor, they were woken up and interviewed about their dreams.
在眼球急速转动的睡眠初期，梦境最容易产生。研究人员对每位女性进行了三次测试——第一次用了苯乙烯醇，一种类似玫瑰的香味；第二次用硫化氢来模拟臭鸡蛋里的硫化物恶臭；最后一次用了中性的气味。体验一分钟以后，她们被叫醒，询问实验过程中的梦境。
