60秒科学:Light All Night Not Alright
Light All Night Not Alright
In a study presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, researchers found that mice that were exposed to light all night long showed signs of depression. Karen Hopkin reports
A nightlight may keep those monsters under the bed. But it may also open the door to the blues 1. Because a new study reveals that animals exposed to light all night long show signs of clinical depression.
If you have access to electricity, you no doubt switch on a lamp, maybe even watch a little TV, after the sun goes down. But our bodies use cues about lightness and dark to regulate our hormones 2 and of course our sleep cycles. So what might these extra photons be doing to our health?
To find out, scientists housed mice in a room where the lights were always on. After three weeks, they found that mice who lived in the spotlight 3 showed symptoms of depression, more so than mice who enjoyed eight hours of darkness at night. Interestingly, mice who could escape the light by ducking into a dark tube also escaped the worst of the depression. The findings were presented on October 21st at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago, and they’ll be published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research in December.
So flip 4 that light switch at your own risk. Because the artificial brightness that helps keep us up could also bring us down.
- She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
- He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。
- This week the spotlight is on the world of fashion.本周引人瞩目的是时装界。
- The spotlight followed her round the stage.聚光灯的光圈随着她在舞台上转。