虽然说熬夜伤身，但新研究发现，习惯晚睡晚起的人在智力、推理、反应速度和记忆力上都要优于早睡早起的人。



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The idea that night owls who don’t go to bed until the early hours struggle to get anything done during the day may have to be revised.

人们通常认为，习惯熬夜的人在白天难以完成任何事情，这一观点可能需要被重新审视。

It turns out that staying up late could be good for our brain power as research suggests that people who identify as night owls could be sharper than those who go to bed early.

研究表明，晚睡可能有助于提升大脑能力。习惯晚睡的人可能比早睡者更敏锐。

Researchers led by academics at Imperial College London studied data from the UK Biobank study on more than 26,000 people who had completed intelligence, reasoning, reaction time and memory tests.

由帝国理工学院的学者领导的研究团队分析了来自英国生物样本库的超过2.6万人的数据，这些人完成了智力、推理、反应时间和记忆测试。

They then examined how participants’ sleep duration, quality, and chronotype (which determines what time of day we feel most alert and productive) affected brain performance.

研究人员随后研究了参与者的睡眠时长、质量和睡眠类型如何影响大脑表现。睡眠类型决定我们一天中什么时候感到最清醒和高效。

They found that those who stay up late and those classed as “intermediate” had “superior cognitive function”, while morning larks had the lowest scores.

研究人员发现，习惯晚睡者和“中间型”人群的“认知功能更强”，而早睡早起者的得分最低。

Going to bed late is strongly associated with creative types. Artists, authors and musicians known to be night owls include Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, James Joyce and Kanye West.

晚睡与创造型人格密切相关。著名的“夜猫子”包括艺术家亨利·德·图卢兹-罗特列克、作家詹姆斯·乔伊斯和音乐人坎耶·维斯特。

But while politicians such as Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill and Barack Obama famously seemed to thrive on little sleep, the study found that sleep duration is important for brain function, with those getting between seven and nine hours of shut-eye each night performing best in cognitive tests.

尽管像玛格丽特·撒切尔、温斯顿·丘吉尔和贝拉克·奥巴马这样的政治家似乎能在很少的睡眠后依然精力充沛，但研究发现，睡眠时长对大脑功能很重要，每晚睡7到9小时的人在认知测试中表现最佳。

Dr Raha West, lead author and clinical research fellow at the department of surgery and cancer at Imperial College London, said: “While understanding and working with your natural sleep tendencies is essential, it’s equally important to remember to get just enough sleep, not too long or too short. This is crucial for keeping your brain healthy and functioning at its best.”

该研究的主要作者、帝国理工学院外科和癌症系的临床研究员拉哈·韦斯特博士说：“了解并遵循你的自然睡眠倾向很重要，但同样重要的是确保获得足够的睡眠，不能太多也不能太少。这对于保持大脑健康和最佳功能至关重要。”

Prof Daqing Ma, the co-leader of the study who is also from Imperial’s department of surgery and cancer, added: “We found that sleep duration has a direct effect on brain function, and we believe that proactively managing sleep patterns is really important for boosting, and safeguarding, the way our brains work.

该研究的共同负责人、同样来自帝国理工学院外科和癌症系的马大庆（音译）教授补充道：“我们发现睡眠时长对大脑功能有直接影响，我们认为积极管理睡眠模式对于提升和保护大脑功能非常重要。”