People who want to learn things might do better by simply stopping to smell the roses, researchers reported lately. 
Jan Born of 1)the University of Lubeck in Germany, and his colleagues, had 74 volunteers learn to play games similar to the game of “Concentration”, in which they had to find matched pairs of objects or cards by turning only one over at a time.
While doing this, some volunteers inhaled the scent of roses. All then agreed to sleep inside an 2)MRI tube. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to “watch” their brains while they slept.
The volunteers were tested again the next day, on what they had learnt. After the 3)odour night, participants remembered 97.2 percent of the card pairs they had learnt before sleep. But, they only remembered 86 percent of the pairs, if they did not get the rose smell while sleeping.
Born’s team said, the scent improved learning ability when it was administered during 4)slow-wave sleep, but had no effect during rapid eye movement sleep.
The MRI showed that the 5)hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with learning new things, was activated when the odour was 6)wafted over the volunteers during slow-wave sleep.
最近有研究者指出，如果人们想提高学习能力，方法其实很简单，仅仅是停下脚步，嗅嗅玫瑰花香即可。
德国吕贝克大学的简·伯恩和他的同事们做了一个实验，他们让74名志愿者学习参与一种类似“集中注意力”的挑战记忆力的游戏——游戏过程中，他们每次只能翻动一个物品或者一张卡片，然后把成对的各组物体或卡片搭配好。
部分志愿者在游戏过程中吸入了玫瑰的花香。然后让所有人在核磁共振成像仪里躺下。功能性核磁共振成像仪开始监测他们入睡时大脑的运作情况。
第二天，志愿者们再次接受游戏测试，内容和第一天相同。结果发现，第一天晚上闻着花香入睡的人，能记住睡觉前学到的97.2%的卡片内容，而那些没有花香伴随入睡的志愿者，只记住了86%的内容。
伯恩的研究小组指出，如果人在慢波睡眠阶段能闻着花香，他们的学习能力能得到改善和提高，但在快速眼动睡眠阶段，花香就起不了什么作用了。
核磁共振成像仪显示，志愿者在慢波睡眠阶段时，随着花香潜入人体，他们大脑中与接受新事物相关的海马状突起会变得活跃起来。