贝什米特先生和信:借酒消愁毫无根据 酒精使记忆更深刻

　　俗话说“借酒浇愁愁更愁”，现代科学研究证明，这并非不无缘故。

　　Scientists have found that drinking will actually help you to remember them.

　　科学家们发现，酒精非但不能使人忘却烦恼，反倒加深了记忆。

　　A new study from the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at The University of Texas at Austin says that getting drunk primes certain areas of our brain to learn and remember things more clearly.

　　一项来自于德克萨斯州立大学奥斯汀分校的研究显示，酒醉会使得人体大脑的某些部分认知与记忆事物得更加清晰。

　　The common view that drinking makes you forget about things and impairs your learning is not wrong, but it highlights only one side of what alcohol does to the brain.

　　通常我们认为，醉酒会使得人们忘记事情，并且导致认知能力的错乱，但这不过只是酒精对于达到影响的一个方面而已。

　　Neurobiologist Hitoshi Morikawa told Science Daily: 'Usually, when we talk about learning and memory, we're talking about conscious memory.

　　神经生物学家森川仁表示，“通常我们在谈论的认知与记忆时，我们指的是有意识的记忆。”

　　'Alcohol diminishes our ability to hold on to pieces of information like your colleague's name, or the definition of a word, or where you parked your car this morning.

　　“究竟会使得我们对于某些刻意记下的信息变得模糊，比如说你同事的名字，某些词语的含义，又或者你今早停车的位置。”

　　'But our subconscious is learning and remembering too, and alcohol may actually increase our capacity to learn, or "conditionability", at that level.'

　　“但我们的潜意识却在认知与记忆中，在一定的条件下，酒精反而会使得这样的能力有所加强。”

　　Mr Morikawa's study, results of which were published last month in The Journal of Neuroscience, found that repeated exposure to ethanol enhances synaptic plasticity in a key area in the brain.

　　森川仁的研究发现，乙醇增强了大脑中的突触可塑性的关键领域的能力。

　　When people drink alcohol or take drugs, the subconscious is not only learning to consume more but becoming more receptive to forming subconscious memories and habits with respect to food, music, even people and social situations.

　　当人们在喝酒时，潜意识不仅在不断的认知，同事还会变得更加活跃以记录下潜意识的记忆，以及对于食物、音乐、人和社交环作出反应。

　　Mr Morikawa says that alcoholics aren't addicted to the experience of pleasure or relief they get from drinking alcohol but to the environmental, behavioural and physiological cues that are reinforced when alcohol triggers the release of dopamine in the brain.

　　森川仁表示，酗酒者不仅对于酒醉之后的快感以及放松感上瘾，但当大脑释放多巴胺时，行为及生理上的暗示和提示反而加强了。

　　He said: 'People commonly think of dopamine as a happy transmitter, or a pleasure transmitter, but more accurately it's a learning transmitter.

　　他说：“人们通常认为多巴胺是一种令人快乐和愉悦的催化剂，但事实上，这更是一种提高认知能力的催化剂。”

　'It strengthens those synapses that are active when dopamine is released.'

　　“多巴胺的释放将加强神经键的活跃度。”

　　Among the things learned when drinking alcohol is that it is rewarding.

　　喝酒时反倒让人认知能力提高，这倒是以外的收获。

　　Going to the bar, chatting with friends, eating certain foods, listening to certain kinds of music and other pleasant things people do while drinking alcohol are rewarding.

　　和一伙朋友到酒吧里，一边喝酒，一边吃着某种事物，一边听着某种音乐，这样所获得了愉悦感是“有益”的。

　　The more often we do these things while drinking, and the more dopamine that gets released, the more 'potentiated' the various synapses become and the more people crave the set of experiences and associations that orbit around the alcohol use.

　　在喝酒时你所做的“附加动作”越多，大脑所释放的多巴胺也会更多，这将使得神经键越加兴奋，以至于记下更多的事。

　　Morikawa's long-term hope is that by understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of addiction better, he can develop anti-addiction drugs that would weaken, rather than strengthen, the key synapses.

　　森川仁希望，通过对于成瘾神经生物学的更好的了解，有助于开发反隐药物来减弱而不是加强神经键。