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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?
你有看著電視睡著，然后夢見自己成了劇中人的經歷嗎？你有和愛人大吵一架，然后夢見自己在夢里被追打的經歷嗎？你有在玩睡眠派對游戲的時候，把女生的手放到溫水里讓她尿床的經歷嗎？科學家在很久以前就發現睡眠和聲音及其他感覺有關，看到的、聽到的或者記憶中的某些外部刺激會對大多數人的夢境產生影響。那么，氣味是否也能影響我們的夢境呢？
Rotten Eggs = Rotten Dreams?
臭雞蛋=噩夢？
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).
這一等式可以成立。近期在德國曼海姆的一所大學附屬醫院里進行了這樣一項研究：兩名睡眠研究人員在實驗室里對15位女性進行了研究（對女性進行氣味研究更為理想，因為研究證明她們的嗅覺器官比男性靈敏得多）。實驗中，研究人員讓不同的氣味飄進熟睡女性的鼻子。
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.
在眼球急速轉動的睡眠初期，夢境最容易產生。研究人員對每位女性進行了三次測試——第一次用了苯乙烯醇，一種類似玫瑰的香味；第二次用硫化氫來模擬臭雞蛋里的硫化物惡臭；最后一次用了中性的氣味。體驗一分鐘以后，她們被叫醒，詢問實驗過程中的夢境。
