SMC Author

Keith Ogawa

SMC Affiliated Work

1

Status

Faculty

School

School of Science

Department

Psychology

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

Publication / Conference / Sponsorship

PLoS One

Description/Abstract

Transcranial extraocular light affects the brains of birds and modulates their seasonal changes in physiology and behavior. However, whether the human brain is sensitive to extraocular light is unknown. To test whether extraocular light has any effect on human brain functioning, we measured brain electrophysiology of 18 young healthy subjects using event-related potentials while they performed a visual attention task embedded with emotional distractors. Extraocular light delivered via ear canals abolished normal emotional modulation of attention related brain responses. With no extraocular light delivered, emotional distractors reduced centro-parietal P300 amplitude compared to neutral distractors. This phenomenon disappeared with extraocular light delivery. Extraocular light delivered through the ear canals was shown to penetrate at the base of the scull of a cadaver. Thus, we have shown that extraocular light impacts human brain functioning calling for further research on the mechanisms of action of light on the human brain.

Scholarly

yes

Peer Reviewed

1

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0149525

Volume

11

Issue

2

First Page

e0149525

Disciplines

Psychology

Rights

Open Access journal

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Comments

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149525

Original Citation

Keith Ogawa (Psychology): “Human brain reacts to transcranial extraocular light,” by Lihua Sun, Jari Peräkylä, Anselmi Kovalainen, Keith H. Ogawa, Pekka J. Karhunen, Kaisa M. Hartikainen (2016), in PLoS One 11(2): doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0149525.

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