Men, sharing your bed reduces brainpower

Sharing your bed can reduce your brain power - but only if you are a man, say scientists.

When men spend the night in the same bed with someone else their sleep patterns are disturbed, even if they do not make love, new research shows.

And this leads to poorer performance in mental agility tests the next day.

However women do not suffer the same problem. They too have disturbed sleep if they share a bed, but tend to get better quality rest when they do finallydrop off. This means their brain power remains undiminished.

The finding suggests that if a man has an important day ahead he would be best to head off to thespare roomto sleep rather than sharing the marital bed.

A team led by Professor Gerhard Kloesch at the University of Vienna recruited eight unmarried, childless couples in their twenties for their study.

He asked them to spend 10 nights sleeping apart and ten together while he monitored their rest patterns at night through wrist monitors and sleep diaries.

The next day he gave them mental ability or 'cognitive' tests.

Even without having sex, everyone had more disturbed sleep when sharing a bed than alone but the effects of this on the brain only affected the men, according to the finding.

According to the research report, lack of sleep led to increased stress hormone levels in men and reduced their ability to perform simple cognitive tests the next day.

However women seemed to show no such ill-effects even if their sleep was just as disturbed. The researchers found women were more refreshed than men even when they slept the same number of hours and so concluded they must sleep more deeply.

The study also found sharing a bed can impact on dreams. Typically women remembered more of their dreams after sleeping alone while men recalled the most after sex.

科學家提示：如果你是男性，和伴侶同床共枕會使你的腦力下降。

一項最新研究表明，如果男性和伴侶同床而眠，即使不做愛，他們的睡眠模式也會被打亂。

這會導致他們在第二天的大腦反應靈敏度下降。

然而，女性卻不會受到這個問題的困擾。當然，她們和伴侶同床時，睡眠也會受到影響，但她們一旦睡著了，身體就會得到很好的休息。這就意味著她們的腦力沒有下降。

研究結果建議，如果第二天有重要的事情要做，男性在前一天晚上最好去客房睡，而不要和伴侶睡在一起。

維也納大學的這個研究小組由杰哈德·克羅奇教授擔任組長，共招募了8對20多歲的未婚無子女情侶作為研究對象。

杰哈德·克羅奇教授讓他們分床睡10個晚上，再同床睡10個晚上，與此同時，他通過調查對象的手腕監視器和睡眠日記來監視他們晚上的睡眠狀態。

第二天，再讓他們做腦力或"認知"測試。

結果表明，即使沒有性生活，每個人和伴侶同床而睡時，睡眠質量都要比單獨睡時差。但只有男性的大腦會因此受到影響。

調查報告稱，缺乏睡眠會導致男性體內應激激素水平升高，從而使他們第二天應付簡單認知測試的能力下降。

然而，女性的睡眠即使受到影響，她們卻沒有類似的不良反應。研究人員們還發現，女性和男性睡眠時間相同的情況下，她們的精力會更充沛，由此推論，女性的睡眠要比男性深。

此外，研究發現，同床而睡還會對做夢產生影響。女性在單獨睡覺后，往往會更清楚地記得夢的內容，而男性則是在做愛后，能清楚的回憶起夢的內容。

Vocabulary:
drop off: 睡覺
spare room: 客房；空房