科学美国人60秒 萨尔瓦多·达利的创作秘密得到了科学支持（在线收听）

Salvador Dali's Creative Secret Is Backed by Science

萨尔瓦多·达利的创作秘密得到了科学支持

Salvador Dali had a peculiar way of refreshing his mind—something he called “slumber with a key.” In his 1948 book 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, he described how it worked.

萨尔瓦多·达利有一种独特的方式让自己头脑清醒，他称之为“用钥匙睡觉”在1948年出版的《魔法工艺的50个秘密》一书中，他描述了它是如何工作的。

“You must seat yourself in a bony armchair, preferably of Spanish style,” he wrote. In your left hand, you were to clench a heavy key, suspended above a plate. Then, he continued, “you will have merely to let yourself be progressively invaded by a serene afternoon sleep, like the spiritual drop of anisette of your soul rising in the cube of sugar of your body.”

“你必须坐在一张瘦骨嶙峋的扶手椅上，最好是西班牙风格的，”他写道。左手握着一把沉重的钥匙，挂在盘子上。然后，他继续说，“你只需要让自己逐渐进入一个宁静的午睡，就像你灵魂中的安妮塞特的精神之珠在你身体的方糖中升起一样。”

As you drifted off, the key would slip from your fingers and clang on the plate, awakening you. He claimed the brief moment spent between wake and sleep would revive your physical and psychic being. And he cautioned that “a mere second is infinitely too long.”

当你离开时，钥匙会从你的手指滑落，在盘子上叮当作响，唤醒你。他声称，在清醒和睡眠之间度过的短暂时刻将使你的身体和精神恢复活力。他警告说，“仅仅一秒钟就太长了。”

Now Dali’s mystical-sounding method has been, to some degree, vindicated by science.

Delphine Oudiette: We show that this period between wake and sleep is actually very inspiring for creativity—and napping with an object in hand might help to tap into this creative sweet spot.

现在，科学在一定程度上证明了大理的神秘探空方法是正确的。

Delphine Ouditete：我们发现，从醒来到睡觉的这段时间实际上对创造力非常有启发作用，拿着东西小睡可能有助于挖掘这个创造性的最佳点。

Christopher Intagliata: Delphine Oudiette is a sleep researcher at the Paris Brain Institute. Since childhood, she’s found it easy to slip into the zone between wake and sleep.

Christopher Intagliata：Delphine Ouditete是巴黎大脑研究所的睡眠研究员。从孩提时代起，她就发现自己很容易陷入觉醒和睡眠之间。

Oudiette: I try to sleep with a problem in mind and let the images come to me. And sometimes I have great ideas.

Oudiette：我试着带着一个问题入睡，然后让这些图像浮现在我的脑海里。有时候我有很棒的想法。

Intagliata: But she was curious to find out why—so she and her colleagues asked 103 volunteers to complete a series of math problems. Unbeknownst to the participants, there was a quick shortcut to solve all the problems. (Sixteen of the volunteers figured that out and were excluded from the rest of the study.)

Intagliata：但她很想知道为什么她和她的同事要求103名志愿者完成一系列数学题。在参与者不知道的情况下，有一条捷径可以快速解决所有问题。（16名志愿者发现了这一点，并被排除在研究的其他部分之外。）

The volunteers who didn’t determine the secret were asked to emulate Dali’s method—but pinching a plastic bottle with their fingertips rather than a key. Some took a Dali-style micro nap, some napped longer, and others didn’t nap at all.

没有确定秘密的志愿者被要求模仿达利的方法，但用指尖而不是钥匙捏塑料瓶。一些人小睡达利式，一些人小睡更长时间，还有一些人根本不打盹。

After the snooze, the researchers asked all the volunteers to do hundreds more of these math problems. And they found that volunteers who took micro naps were nearly three times as likely to figure out the problem-solving trick, compared to those who didn’t nap at all.

打盹后，研究人员要求所有志愿者再做数百道这样的数学题。他们发现，与那些根本不打盹的志愿者相比，小睡的志愿者想出解决问题诀窍的可能性几乎是不打盹的志愿者的三倍。

Oudiette: That’s a pretty massive result.  We think, maybe in this phase, you have the best of the two worlds: sleep and wake. So you lose control of your thoughts. So you can have loose associations—make distant associations between different memories—and that could be helpful for creativity. But at the same time, you keep some awareness that might help you to recognize when you have a great idea.

Oudiette: 这是一个相当大的结果。我们认为，也许在这个阶段，你拥有两个世界中最好的：睡眠和觉醒。所以你失去了对自己思想的控制。所以你可以有松散的联系，在不同的记忆之间建立遥远的联系，这可能有助于创造力。但同时，你要保持一些意识，这可能会帮助你认识到什么时候你有一个好主意。

Intagliata: Those who slept for longer periods actually did worse than both those who briefly slept and those who stayed awake. The results appear in the journal Science Advances. [Célia Lacaux et al., Sleep onset is a creative sweet spot]

Intagliata:那些睡眠时间较长的人实际上比那些短暂睡眠和保持清醒的人做得更糟。研究结果发表在《科学进步》杂志上。

Oudiette says the next step of her work will involve repeating the experiment with other creative tasks, beyond math problems ...

Oudiette: And, yeah, to know more about the mechanism—and maybe to try to teach people to reach this creative sweet spot.

Oudiette说，她的下一步工作将涉及重复其他创造性任务的实验，除了数学问题。。。

Oudiette：是的，要知道更多关于这个机制的知识，也许要教人们如何达到这个创造性的最佳状态。

Intagliata: As for Dali? In his book, he describes a variation of his method in which he instructs the reader to, quote, “eat three dozen sea urchins, gathered on one of the last two days that precede the full moon.” He specified that “these sea urchins should be eaten preferably in the spring—May is a good month.”

Intagliata: 至于达利？在他的书中，他描述了他的方法的一种变体，他指导读者，引用“吃三十多只海胆，它们是在满月前的最后两天采集的。”他特别指出，“这些海胆最好在春天吃，五月是个好月份。”

Clearly, the great painter has left scientists with much to investigate.

显然，这位伟大的画家给科学家留下了许多需要研究的东西。