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

世卫组织预测，到2030年，精神健康问题将成为全球死亡和发病的主要原因。在过去的十年中，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学途径。了解视觉刺激如何影响情绪和情感状态是非常及时的，因为人们现在花费>90%的时间在室内暴露于人工照明，并且> 10小时/天在众多设备（电视，手机，电脑）的屏幕前。令人鼓舞的是，光可以作为一种有效的非侵入性治疗选择，几乎没有副作用，可以改善睡眠，情绪和整体健康。光照疗法是治疗季节性情感障碍的首选疗法，并且正在成为治疗其他精神疾病的新兴疗法（1，2）。我们对视觉系统影响情绪和情感状态的能力还处于早期阶段。到目前为止，我们知道明亮的蓝光会增加人类的觉醒，监督团队已经表明，这种效果至少有一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）。但是我们的视觉环境更加复杂，如果认为场景亮度是唯一可以影响情绪的视觉感觉，那就太天真了。然而，我们仍然不知道什么类型的视觉信号在调节情绪中最重要，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. "