Do Dim Lights Produce Dim Wits?
The next time you're in a dim room, you may have trouble remembering it.
Or so a new study says.
According to newswise.com, 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 research by Michigan State University neuroscientists.
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.
Ok, so the study was done with rats exposed to dim and bright lights for a couple of weeks. As you might expect, the rodents who had more light did better in the trial. But still, we've all heard of how not spending enough time outside may lead to a decrease in Vitamin D, which can lead to depression and fatigue, along with other health concerns.
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.
I run outside in the winter so I get a fair amount of Vitamin D but I must admit, I do get depressed when I'm driving my junior to high school in the morning in the dark.
“When we exposed the rats to dim light, mimicking the cloudy days of Midwestern winters or typical indoor lighting, the animals showed impairments in spatial learning,” notes Antonio “Tony” Nunez, psychology professor and co-investigator on the study. “This is similar to when people can’t find their way back to their cars in a busy parking lot after spending a few hours in a shopping mall or movie theater.”
Researchers say sustained exposure to dim light led to significant reductions in a substance called brain-erived neurotrophic factor – a peptide that helps maintain healthy connections and neurons in the hippocampus – and in dendritic spines, or the connections that allow neurons to “talk” to one another.
Adds Joel Soler, a doctoral graduate student in psychology and lead author of a paper on the findings, “Since there are fewer connections being made, this results in diminished learning and memory performance that is dependent upon the hippocampus. In other words, dim lights are producing dimwits.”
Interestingly, light does not directly affect the hippocampus, meaning it acts first at other sites within the brain after passing through the eyes.
So don't spend too much time in dim light -- or indoors? -- is the advice given by the researchers.
Or so a new study says.
According to newswise.com, 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 research by Michigan State University neuroscientists.
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.
Ok, so the study was done with rats exposed to dim and bright lights for a couple of weeks. As you might expect, the rodents who had more light did better in the trial. But still, we've all heard of how not spending enough time outside may lead to a decrease in Vitamin D, which can lead to depression and fatigue, along with other health concerns.
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.
I run outside in the winter so I get a fair amount of Vitamin D but I must admit, I do get depressed when I'm driving my junior to high school in the morning in the dark.
“When we exposed the rats to dim light, mimicking the cloudy days of Midwestern winters or typical indoor lighting, the animals showed impairments in spatial learning,” notes Antonio “Tony” Nunez, psychology professor and co-investigator on the study. “This is similar to when people can’t find their way back to their cars in a busy parking lot after spending a few hours in a shopping mall or movie theater.”
Researchers say sustained exposure to dim light led to significant reductions in a substance called brain-erived neurotrophic factor – a peptide that helps maintain healthy connections and neurons in the hippocampus – and in dendritic spines, or the connections that allow neurons to “talk” to one another.
Adds Joel Soler, a doctoral graduate student in psychology and lead author of a paper on the findings, “Since there are fewer connections being made, this results in diminished learning and memory performance that is dependent upon the hippocampus. In other words, dim lights are producing dimwits.”
Interestingly, light does not directly affect the hippocampus, meaning it acts first at other sites within the brain after passing through the eyes.
So don't spend too much time in dim light -- or indoors? -- is the advice given by the researchers.
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