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A researcher puts electrodes on this older dog's head to record its electrical brain activity.
研究人员把电极放在这只大龄犬头上，以记录它的脑电波活动。
The recordings of 15 elderly dogs while they slept for three hours showed brief bursts of neural activity called sleep spindles.
研究人员对15只大龄犬的睡眠进行了记录，通过三小时的睡眠，我们看到它们的大脑出现了短暂的脑神经活动，我们称之为睡眠纺锤波。
From studies with humans and rodents, we know that they are extremely useful markers both of memory and cognition,
从人类和啮齿类动物的研究中我们得知，这种纺锤波对衡量记忆力和认知能力来说非常有用。
but also of aging and activity in the dog sleep spindles have only been described.
通过纺锤波，我们还能看出狗的老化程度以及大脑活动。
They were never quantified. They were never related to function.
它们没有被量化，它们与生物体的功能没有任何关系。
This is the first time we were able to show that sleep spindles predict learning in the dog.
这是我们首次能够证明睡眠纺锤波可以预测狗的学习活动。
The scientists found differences between male and female dogs.
科学家们发现雄性和雌性狗有区别。
Female dogs have approximately on average twice as many spindles per minute as male dogs.
雌性犬纺锤波平均每分钟比雄性犬多两倍。
And they also happen to be the better learners. They memorize the tasks much better.
而且雌性犬在学习方面也更胜一筹，它们在记忆任务方面更有优势。
But all the older dogs were less able to remember things especially when a lot is happening at the same time.
但是所有大龄犬的记忆力普遍不好，尤其是当许多事情同时发生的时候。
If you first hide the reward into one point and then in another and another, they get confused after a while,
如果你把奖励藏在一处，然后又藏在另一处，然后又换地方，那么它们会感到困惑，
so their performance is declining and they are getting less effective in solving novel problems and shifting from one task to another.
所以它们的表现在下降，解决新问题的效率也在下降，任务之间的转换也在下降。
Researchers hope the study will not only help understanding of cognitive ability and memory changes in dogs but also in the human aging process.
研究人员希望这项研究不仅有助于了解狗的认知能力和记忆变化，而且有助于研究人类的衰老过程。
Among very old dogs, up to two thirds of them shows signs of dementia and this dementia is really very similar in a lot of aspects to that of humans,
在老龄犬当中，多达三分之二显示出痴呆的迹象，而这种痴呆在许多方面与人类非常相似，
so we could use dogs as a natural model of human aging.
所以我们可以把犬的衰老过程看作是人的衰老过程。
The team has a dog brain and tissue bank to share samples of canine brain disease with researchers around the world.
该团队拥有一个犬类大脑和组织库，它可以与来自世界各地的研究人员分享犬类大脑疾病样本。
Deborah Block, VOA News.
VOA新闻，德布拉·布洛克为您报道。
