'Biological mechanisms underlying the impact of visual stimuli on mood and affective state'

世界卫生组织预测，到2030年，精神健康问题将成为全球死亡和发病的主要原因。在过去的十年里，有证据表明视觉系统代表了一种新的调节情绪的神经生理途径。了解视觉刺激如何影响情绪和情感安全是非常及时的，因为人们现在有90%的时间是在室内暴露在人工照明下，每天有10小时是在各种设备的屏幕前（电视、手机、电脑）。令人鼓舞的是，光可以作为一种有效的、非侵入性的治疗选择，几乎没有副作用，可以改善睡眠、情绪和整体健康。光疗法是季节性情感障碍的治疗选择，并且正在成为其他精神疾病的治疗方法（1,2）。我们在理解视觉系统影响情绪和情感状态的能力方面还处于初级阶段。到目前为止，我们知道明亮的和蓝色的光会增加人类的觉醒，并且管理团队已经表明，这种效果至少部分可以归因于我们眼睛中的一种特定类型的视网膜细胞（3,4）。但我们的视觉环境更为复杂，认为场景亮度是唯一能影响情绪的视觉感觉是naïve。然而，我们仍然不知道哪种类型的视觉信号在调节情绪方面最重要，以及潜在的生物学机制是什么。”

"The WHO predicts mental health problems to be the leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally by 2030. In the last decade, evidence has emerged that the visual system represents a new neurophysiological pathway regulating mood. Understanding how visual stimuli influence mood and affective sate is very timely because people now spend >90% of their time indoors exposed to artificial lighting, and >10h/day in front of screens of numerous devices (TVs, phones, computers). Encouragingly, light can be used as an effective and non-invasive therapeutic option with little to no side effects, to improve sleep, mood, and general well-being. Light therapy is the treatment of choice for seasonal affective disorder and is emerging as a treatment for other psychiatric disorders(1,2).We are at an early stage of understanding the visual system's ability to influence mood and affective state. So far we know that bright and blue light increases arousal in humans, and the supervisory team has shown that at least part of this effect can be attributed to a specific type of retinal cells in our eyes(3,4). But our visual environment is more complex and it would be naïve to think that scene brightness is the only visual sensation that can impact mood. However, we still do not know what types of visual signals are most important in regulating mood and what are the underlying biological mechanisms. "