Lack of light in the workplace impairs performance

Artificial lighting does not provide enough light to keep the brain in working order: biological rhythms begin to work in dim office lighting as if it were twilight during sunset, reducing productivity and increasing lethargy.

To maintain a working atmosphere in the office, cut additional windows in it.

Researchers from the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (Switzerland) have proven the hypothesis that the feeling of vivacity or drowsiness depends on the lighting of the room. Therefore, higher cognitive functions also depend on this: if you want to work energetically and with passion, try to ensure the greatest influx of light to your workplace.

It is known that biological rhythms depend on the change of day and night. In the human eye there are unique photoreceptors with the pigment melanopsin: unlike rods and cones, they are needed not to transmit visual information, but to measure the amount of light around us. These receptors are especially sensitive to the blue spectrum of light; and it is precisely these structures that determine the correspondence of the biological clock and the daily time. It would be logical to assume that the amount of light entering our eye, through the circadian rhythm, is able to affect the work of our nervous system. However, can an artificial source replace a natural one in this case?

For the experiment, the scientists invited 29 young people. During the study, they put on bracelets with light sensors and motion sensors that recorded the activity of the experiment participants (speed of movement, general mobility). In the first case, a person was placed in a room with illumination of 1,000-2,000 lux, which corresponds to a natural dose of light. In the second case, the illumination was only 170 lux - like in a windowless room lit only by lamps. In addition to taking sensor readings, the scientists also asked the subjects themselves how alert they felt. By the end of their stay in the room, the young people were almost completely turned off the light: the light intensity dropped to 6 lux. During the last 2 hours in a semi-dark room, saliva samples were taken from the volunteers in order to analyze the content of the hormones cortisol and melatonin, the production of which is subject to a circadian rhythm. In addition, during the experiment, its participants had to perform memory tests.

As scientists report in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience, those in a brighter room were more energetic and active than those in a room with artificial light. As soon as the illumination dropped 10 times, people began to feel sleepy, they became less energetic and performed worse on cognitive tests. The authors of the work emphasize: it was not at all that the participants in the experiment were given or not given enough sleep. That is, even a well-rested person will feel apathetic if he has to work in a semi-dark kennel: his internal biological clock will regard this as twilight and will begin to prepare the body for sleep.

This result was not accompanied by changes in hormone levels; in other words, illumination had a major effect only on certain functions of the body, while the daily rhythm of others remained the same. Of course, each of us can sometimes notice something similar - when after a long stay in the semi-darkness we begin to feel sleepy, and the corresponding hypothesis, as was said, has existed in science for quite a long time. However, paradoxically, almost no one has yet been engaged in strict experimental confirmation of this theory.

[ 1 ], [ 2 ]