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Spending too much time in dimly lit rooms and offices may actually change the brain's structure and hurt one's ability to remember and learn, indicates groundbreaking research by Michigan State University neuroscientists.
A new study reveals exposure to dim light might impact memory and learning. Researchers report rodents exposed to dim lighting lost 30 percent of hippocampal capacity and performed poorly on spatial tasks they had previously experienced.
The researchers studied the brains of Nile grass rats (which, like humans, are diurnal and sleep at night) after exposing them to dim and bright light for four weeks. The rodents exposed to dim light lost about 30 percent of capacity in the hippocampus, a critical brain region for learning and memory, and performed poorly on a spatial task they had trained on previously.
The rats exposed to bright light, on the other hand, showed significant improvement on the spatial task. Further, when the rodents that had been exposed to dim light were then exposed to bright light for four weeks (after a month-long break), their brain capacity – and performance on the task – recovered fully.
The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is the first to show that changes in environmental light, in a range normally experienced by humans, leads to structural changes in the brain. Americans, on average, spend about 90 percent of their time indoors, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Source: http://neurosciencenews.com/dim-light-dumber-8433/
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @01:44PM (6 children)
Gotta crank up monitor brightness control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @02:32PM
it's dim -> crank up brightness -> no sleep -> get dumb anyway
:(
(Score: 2) by Snospar on Wednesday February 07 2018, @02:37PM (4 children)
Yeah, I'm basically sitting in front of a collection of bright LED lights all day. How is that going to make me dumberer?
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 07 2018, @04:45PM (1 child)
Speaking of which... We changed out all our light bulbs for LED low-energy bulbs to run lots of lights but still save on our electric bill. I know the LED bulbs can't be anywhere near the same spectrum of light provided by the Sun. So, when they are bright, do they still count as dim because of gaps in their spectrum? I wonder.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday February 07 2018, @06:14PM
I took a Public Administration course years ago where the professor claimed that studies have shown that blue lights increase happiness and productivity when compared with yellow lights. Despite our glowing yellow sun, the sky tends to be blue (Rayleigh scattering and all that jazz). My house is now adorned with blue LED bulbs, but I have no citations for you.
(Score: 3, Funny) by chromas on Wednesday February 07 2018, @05:20PM (1 child)
Do you run Windows?
(Score: 3, Touché) by RS3 on Friday February 09 2018, @01:14AM
(sigh) No, Windows generally runs me.