Dim Night Light Too Can Trigger Depression

Neuroscientists believe that having even a dim night light while sleeping can disturb a person’s mental health and cause depressive symptoms. Scientists who presented the result of their study in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience said they found female Siberian hamsters exposed to dim light every night for eight weeks showed significant changes in the hippocampus region of the brain and displayed depressive symptoms when compared to another set of hamsters kept in total darkness.

According to Tracy Bedrosian, co-author of the study and doctoral student in Neuroscience at Ohio State University, "Even dim light at night is sufficient to provoke depressive-like behaviors in hamsters, which may be explained by the changes we saw in their brains after eight weeks of exposure."

Previous studies in mice have shown that those exposed to bright light at night became depressed and obese.


Source-Medindia