飽食容易疲倦 兩分飢餓可延壽

需要熬夜怎麼辦？你可能不想靠吃甜點來趕走睡意。對果蠅的最新研究表明，飢餓能讓缺少睡眠的頭腦保持清醒。

Pulling a late-nighter? You might not want to reach for the sugary snacks to keep you awake. A new study involving fruit flies suggests the sleep-deprived mind is kept alert by hunger.

需要熬夜怎麼辦？你可能不想靠吃甜點來趕走睡意。對果蠅的最新研究表明，飢餓能讓缺少睡眠的頭腦保持清醒。

The study examined the effects of starvation on fruit flies that had been genetically engineered to be sensitive to sleep deprivation. Sleepy flies deprived of food stayed awake longer than sleepy flies that got meals. The starving flies also lived longer.

研究測試了經過基因改造從而對缺少睡眠特別敏感的果蠅捱餓後的反應。結果發現，相比那些得到食物的睏乏果蠅，飢餓的睏乏果蠅清醒的時間更長。同時飢餓的果蠅壽命也更長。

"From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense," said study co-author Matt Thimgan, a Washington University postdoctoral researcher. "If you're starving, you want to make sure you're on the top of your game cognitively, to improve your chances of finding food rather than becoming food for someone else."

“這從進化的角度看是行得通的，”研究作者之一、華盛頓大學的馬特說道。“如果你處在飢餓狀態，你就會努力設法清醒地掌控自己的生存狀態，以增加尋獲食物的機會，而不是成爲別人的食物。”

To tease out the relationships between sleep, starvation and survival, the researchers deprived fruit flies of both food and sleep. They found that starving fruit flies spent more time awake than satiated flies did. The researchers also tested the flies' saliva for enzymes that signal sleepiness and measured the flies' ability to associate a light with an unpleasant stimulus. Both tests showed that the starving flies were alert, not sleepy.

爲了找到睡眠、飢餓和生存之間的關係，研究人員同時剝奪了果蠅的食物和睡眠。他們發現，飢餓的果蠅比吃飽的果蠅清醒的時間長。研究人員還檢測了果蠅唾液中顯示睏倦程度的酶，還測試了果蠅將光亮與令人不快的刺激聯繫起來的能力。兩種測試結果均表明飢餓的果蠅是清醒的，沒有睡意。

The starving flies also survived up to 28 hours without sleep, three times longer than the flies with access to food. The survivors' ability is probably linked to a gene that helps the fruit-fly brain manage the storage and use of fat molecules, the researchers said.

飢餓的果蠅能在不睡覺的情況下存活28小時，是那些能得到食物的果蠅存活時間的三倍。研究人員稱，這種生存能力可能與幫助果蠅大腦控制脂肪分子存儲與使用的一種基因有關。