If the perpetual grey skies in winter leave some people feeling cloudy headed, there may be a scientific reason. A new study released by Michigan State University neuroscientists has concluded that spending too much time in dim light actually changes the brain's structure and hurts one's ability to remember and learn.
Dr. Tony Nunez, is a co-investigator on the study. He says, his team of researchers studied the brains of Nile grass rats (which, like humans, are diurnal and sleep at night) after exposing them to dim light for four weeks.
“And we found that the animals with the dim light exposure were deficient, they would forget over 24 hours what they had learned the day before,” Nunez said. “But more important we were able to probe the mechanism, and we found that in this particular part of the brain, which is called the hippocampus, which is very important for human memory, there were chemical changes that reduce the capacity for information processing in that part of the brain by about 30 percent.”
The good news? Once the lab rats returned to bright lights they regained their brain function and memory performance. So the lesson Nunez says, is turn up those lights during winter.
“So in Michigan, we can’t control what is happening in nature, but we can at least keep the lights bright when we are indoors,” Nunez said. “The alternative is to do what a lot of people do which is go to Florida for a few days and get exposed to light and hope the brain recovers from the Michigan winter.”
