奇瑞产品组合策略:人会在睡觉时打喷嚏吗？

我父亲睡觉时会打鼾。他的鼾声堪比一部动作大片，充满精彩情节。入睡15分钟后，你会听到好像有水牛跟推土机比赛，还有类似电锯的声音从他房里传来。这声音会越来越大，大到把他吵醒而告终。这最后会有“哼”“哈”来收尾。至此，会有片刻的安宁，整间屋子都试着在噪音再起前进入梦乡。

You’d think it would follow, then, that we would regularly jar ourselves awake with sneezes, too, but that isn’t the case. Actually, it seems I pulled a trick question out of the mailbag this week, because we don’t sneeze in our sleep at all.

这时，你应该会想，我们也会经常因打喷嚏而醒来，可事实并非如此。现在看来，我好像从邮箱里挑了一个捉弄人的问题，因为我们根本就不会再睡觉时打喷嚏。

The Roots of the Sneeze

打喷嚏的原因

A sneeze is a reflexive response to external stimulants slipping past your nose hairs and reaching the sensitive mucous membranes that line the nasal passage (another common cause is the “photic sneeze reflex,” a genetic trait that causes sneezing when a person is suddenly exposed to bright light). Nerve endings in the membranes send signals to the brain about the foreign invaders, and the brain sends signals to muscles in the face, throat and chest to go ahead clean house by expelling air from the nose and mouth.

喷嚏是指当异物进入鼻腔、触动鼻毛，刺激了敏感的鼻粘膜后所引起的反射行为。（另一种状况叫做旋光性喷嚏反射，是指一见到强光就打喷嚏的一种遗传特性）。位于粘膜上的神经元会向大脑发出关于异物的信号，接着大脑会向脸部、喉咙和胸腔的肌肉发出指令，进而从口鼻排出空气清理异物。

We’re actually more prone to sneezing while asleep, since the mucous membranes swell when we lie down, but because there usually isn’t much airflow or movement to stir up dust or other particles while we sleep, the membranes don’t come into contact with as many stimulants as they do when we’re awake.

当我们躺下时鼻粘膜是隆起的，我们应该更容易在睡觉时打喷嚏，可事实却并非如此，那是因为当我们睡着时，通常没有太强的空气流动和运动去扬起灰尘或者微粒，粘膜也就不会像在我们清醒时受到那么多的刺激而发出信号。

Our odds of have having to sneeze during sleep are already reduced, but our bodies have a neat little trick up their sleeves to keep us at rest. It’s called REM atonia, a state caused by the shutdown of the release of certain neurotransmitters during REM sleep that results in motor neurons not being stimulated and reflectory signals not being sent to the brain. So, even if there were various stimulants being kicked up while you slept (say, by an evil cat playing with his rubber ball or biting your toes at five in the morning), and a few got into your nose, the brain wouldn’t be alerted to the matter.

这样，我们睡觉时打喷嚏的几率就被降低了，但我们的身体也有保持我们睡眠的小妙招。它叫做快波睡眠期肌肉麻痹现象。是一种在快波睡眠期，因某些神经传送介质的释放被压制了，结果，运动神经元没有被刺激，也就不会向大脑发出身体行动的信号的现象。所以，即使在你睡觉时存在着各种各样的刺激物（比如说，被顽皮的猫玩它的皮球或是咬你的脚趾头扬起的），一些跑进了你的鼻腔里，大脑也不会意识到的。

It is possible, if the external stimulants are sufficient (say, by an evil cat dusting your mustache with pepper), for a person to wake up to sneeze.

但如果外界刺激足够多（比如，沾了胡椒粉的小猫扫你的鼻子），就很有可能让你醒来打个喷嚏。

This question was asked by Regina from Texas. If you’ve got a burning question that you’d like to see answered here, shoot me an email at flossymatt (at) gmail.com. Twitter users can also make nice with me and ask me questions there. Be sure to give me your name and location (and a link, if you want) so I can give you a little shout out.

这个问题是由德克萨斯州的雷吉提出来的。如果大家有亟待解决的问题，并希望在这里得到答案，可以通过flossymatt@gmail.com联系我。也可以关注我的推特，在那里向我提问。记得留下你的名字和地点（如果你愿意，还有链接）这样我就可以直接回复。