Temporal-Spectral Control of Artificail Lighting for Improved Health

目前的研究表明，通过含黑视蛋白的视网膜神经节细胞（mc-RGC）通路，每日的光暴露模式对急性脑功能和昼夜生理的每日夹带都有深远的影响。 我们的夜间暴露于人工照明是破坏昼夜生理，如控制睡眠研究和轮班工作者的研究，特别是不规则的轮班工作。 昼夜生理紊乱会严重影响警觉性和认知功能。 慢性昼夜节律紊乱与癌症、代谢综合征和广泛的神经精神功能障碍的发病率增加有关。 现代生活越来越多地以白天和夜晚的长时间室内活动为特征，对于这些活动，应用相同的传统照明标准。 这些标准是基于色觉敏感性，而不考虑mc-rgc通路的激活。这就更有可能使那些白天大部分时间都呆在室内，晚上大量观看电脑和电视的人，可能会破坏他们正常的昼夜光谱辐照度模式。这种方式导致广泛的昼夜节律破坏和慢性生理压力。因此，人们可以通过暂时改变人造光谱来提高白天的mc-rgc激活（蓝光富集）和降低夜间的mc-rgc激活（减少蓝色成分），从而改善我们现代民众的健康和生产力。我们一直在寻找简单的方法来测试这一假设，并提供实用的手段，为个人优化给定的范围广泛的现实世界的环境光曝光模式。荧光照明和最近的LED照明能够通过增加透射通过产生输出白色光的磷光体的初级蓝光的量来极大地丰富蓝色光谱。例如，最近的研究表明，白天在痴呆症患者的白天公共休息室暴露于明亮的高色温（蓝色富集）荧光灯下，导致认知功能长期下降的速度降低。任何增加白天黑视蛋白激活的标准光在夜间使用时也会导致干扰。对于普通人群来说，我们认为这种富含蓝光的人造灯光在夜间造成的昼夜节律紊乱是一个主要问题。为了优化现代城市世界的昼夜健康，我们假设需要对人造光谱进行时间控制。 电脑显示器（和电视机）的设计普遍超过环境光水平到达视网膜（因此支配mc-rgc通路激活时，使用。在我们的现代社会中，大部分人口平均每天使用电脑4小时。 类似地，在美国普通家庭中，电视通常长达8小时。这些我们经常长时间注视的高亮度光源最有可能改变含有黑视蛋白的视网膜神经节细胞的自然激活模式及其向大脑的投射。然而，现代计算机监视器和数字电视提供了一种通过改变RGB增益结构来动态控制相对于色觉灵敏度的mc-rgc激活的路径。 我们已经开发了动态色彩平衡软件，可以控制昼夜循环的色彩平衡，使mc-rgc激活变化10倍，同时保持明视灵敏度恒定。 我们的假设是，每天使用电脑对昼夜生理有可测量的影响。通过使用易于导出的软件动态控制RGB平衡，我们希望开发基于计算机的真实世界测试平台，以测量全天对警觉性和认知功能的急性影响。使用给定个体的表现的昼夜记录可能最终用于自优化给定个体的人造光谱的时间模式，其受其其他日常环境时程和可能的其昼夜节律系统生理学中的遗传变异两者的影响。 我们目前正试图将我们对LED/LCD电脑显示器和智能手机的频谱时间控制与计算机化的注意力、反应时间、认知功能和生产力测试相结合。我们将使用受试者的个人电脑来记录这些数据结果，沿着的还有那些来自定期的基于计算机的问卷调查。 有了这个组合测试平台，我们计划设计新的研究，以照明光谱-时间控制优化健康在现实世界的系统容易出口到办公室和家庭环境。我们正在考虑此类系统执行匿名研究（受试者选择的用户名和密码）的潜力，以提供低成本的大型队列研究，从而提供个人反馈的潜力，以加强改善昼夜健康和表现的行为。 在与劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室的照明部门和加州照明研究中心的合作下，美国能源部FLEMP拨款，我们已经开发出可编程的低级别的时间和光谱控制的计算机显示器亮度，这是与其他计算机程序的正常功能兼容，无论是认知功能测试和正常的计算机使用在工作和家庭。

Current research indicates that daily patterns of light exposures, through the melanopsin-containing retinal ganglion cell (mc-RGC) pathway, has a profound effect on both acute brain function and daily entrainment of circadian physiology. Our night-time exposures to artificial lighting are disruptive of circadian physiology as shown in controlled sleep studies and studies on shift-workers, particularly irregular shift work. Disruption of circadian physiology acutely affects alertness and cognitive function. Chronic circadian disruption has been linked to increased incidence of cancer, metabolic syndrome, and a wide spectrum of neuro-psychiatric dysfunction. Modern life is increasingly characterized by long periods of indoor activity during both day and night for which the same conventional lighting standards are applied. These standards are based on color vision sensitivity regardless of mc-rgc pathway activation. This creates greater likelihood that individuals spending most of the daylight hours indoors and extensively viewing computers and televisions at night may fragment their normal diurnal pattern of spectral irradiance. This way lead to widespread circadian disruption and chronic physiological stresses. Consequently, one might improve both health and productivity of our modern populace by temporally altering the artificial light spectrum to increase mc-rgc activation (blue-light enrichment) during the daytime and decreasing it at night (diminished blue component). We have been searching for simple ways to test this hypothesis and to provide practical means for individual optimization given the wide range of real-world ambient light exposure patterns. Fluorescent lighting and more recently LED lighting are capable of greatly enriching the blue spectrum by increasing the amount of primary blue light transmitted through the phosphors that create the output white light. For example, recent studies suggest that daytime exposure to bright high-color-temperature (blue-enriched) fluorescent lights in daytime common rooms of patients with dementia led to decreased rate of long-term decline in cognitive function. Any standard light that increases daytime melanopsin activation will also lead to disruption when used at night. For the general population, we believe circadian disruption from such blue-light rich artificial lights at night is a major problem. To optimize circadian health in the modern urban world, we hypothesize will require temporal control of the artificial light spectrum. Computer monitors (and televisions) are universally designed to exceed ambient light levels reaching the retina (hence dominate mc-rgc pathway activation when used. In our modern society, large segments of the population average 4 hours of computer use per day. Similarly televisions are on typically up to 8 hours in an average American household. These high brightness sources on which we routinely fixate for long periods are the most likely light to be altering natural patterns of activation of melanopsin-containing retinal ganglion cells and their projections to the brain. However, modern computer monitors and digital televisions provide a path to dynamically control mc-rgc activation relative to color vision sensitivity by altering the RGB gain structure. We have developed dynamic color balance software that can control the color balance over a diurnal cycle to vary mc-rgc activation 10 fold while keeping photopic sensitivity constant. Our hypothesis is that daily computer use is having a measurable effect on circadian physiology. By using dynamic control of the RGB balance with easily exported software, we hope to develop computer based real-world testbeds to measure such acute effects on alertness and cognitive function throughout the day. Using the diurnal records of performance for a given individuals might eventually be use to self-optimize the temporal pattern of artificial light spectra for a given individual which is affected by both their other daily environmental zeitgebers and likely the genetic variations in their circadian systems physiology. We are currently trying to integrate our spectral-temporal control of LED/LCD computer monitors and smartphones with computerized attention, response time, cognitive function and productivity tests. We would use the subjects epersonal computer to log these data results along with those from computer-based questionnaires presented at regular intervals. With this combined testbed, we plan to design new research into lighting spectral-temporal control optimization for health in real-world systems readily exportable to office and home environments. We are considering the potential for such systems to perform anonymized studies (subject selected username and password) to provide low cost large cohort studies that provide the potential for individual feedback to reinforce behaviors that improve circadian health and performance. In collaboration with the Lighting Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the California Lighting Research Center under a DOE FLEMP grant, we have developed programmable low-level temporal and spectral control of computer monitor luminance that is compatible with the normal function of other computer programs both for cognitive function testing and for normal computer uses at work and at home.