60秒科学:Light All Night Not Alright

Light All Night Not Alright
In a study presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, researchers found that mice that were exposed to light all night long showed signs of depression. Karen Hopkin reports

A nightlight may keep those monsters under the bed. But it may also open the door to the blues¹. Because a new study reveals that animals exposed to light all night long show signs of clinical depression.

If you have access to electricity, you no doubt switch on a lamp, maybe even watch a little TV, after the sun goes down. But our bodies use cues about lightness and dark to regulate our hormones² and of course our sleep cycles. So what might these extra photons be doing to our health?

To find out, scientists housed mice in a room where the lights were always on. After three weeks, they found that mice who lived in the spotlight³ showed symptoms of depression, more so than mice who enjoyed eight hours of darkness at night. Interestingly, mice who could escape the light by ducking into a dark tube also escaped the worst of the depression. The findings were presented on October 21st at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago, and they’ll be published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research in December.

So flip⁴ that light switch at your own risk. Because the artificial brightness that helps keep us up could also bring us down.
 

1 blues   

n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐

参考例句：

• She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
• He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。

2 hormones   

n. 荷尔蒙，激素 名词hormone的复数形式

参考例句：

• This hormone interacts closely with other hormones in the body. 这种荷尔蒙与体內其他荷尔蒙紧密地相互作用。
• The adrenals produce a large per cent of a man's sex hormones. 肾上腺分泌人体的大部分性激素。

3 spotlight   

n.公众注意的中心，聚光灯，探照灯，视听，注意，醒目

参考例句：

• This week the spotlight is on the world of fashion.本周引人瞩目的是时装界。
• The spotlight followed her round the stage.聚光灯的光圈随着她在舞台上转。

4 flip   

vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的

参考例句：

• I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
• Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。