Applications in sleep: How light affects sleep.

Sleep is an active physiological state that plays a critical role in our physical and mental health and well-being. It is generated by a complex interplay between two oscillators, namely, the circadian oscillator and the sleep-wake homeostat. Sleep propensity is a function of wakefulness, that is, the longer one is awake the greater the homeostatic sleep pressure. Sleep onset occurs as a wake promoting circadian signal subsides, coinciding with an evening rise in melatonin and drop in core temperature. Light is one of the strongest time signals for the circadian oscillator. Poor sleep is a prevalent complaint today, attributable, in part, to our easy access to artificial light, especially after dusk. This non-visual effect of light is mediated by a multi-component photoreceptive system, consisting of rods, cones and melanopsin-expressing intrinsically-photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGC). Perhaps, with this available biological knowledge we can engineer artificial light to minimize its disruptive effect on sleep. We will highlight this by discussing circadian photoreception and its effect on sleep, in the blind population.

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