This project addresses the unmet challenge of the role of sleep and circadian health in adverse affective experiences in healthy populations. Five dimensions of sleep and circadian health are considered (duration, efficiency, timing, alertness, and quality) across a combination of physiological, behavioural, and psychological markers. We propose to test a specific hypothesis addressing the role of ‘exposure to light’ (environmental and seasonal) as a core mediator between the physiological changes in circadian rhythms and sleep and its impact on behaviour and affective experiences. The entrainment of circadian rhythms is achieved by environmental time-cues (i.e., zeitgebers), physical and daily activities, social cues, meals, and work patterns. By constraining the cycles of sleep/activity cycles, shiftwork represents a unique opportunity to explore the impacts of disturbances on the entrainment of circadian rhythms in sleep and circadian health. Furthermore, variations in exposure to light (e.g., light during the night, lack of light during the day) are recognised as key factors driving the misalignment and adverse health consequences. We are interested in melanopic lux, a new metric of the light captured by the retina in opposition to metrics that measure light in the environment. Year 1: Conduct a systematic review on the impacts of exposure to light on the sleep and circadian health of adult healthy populations. The review considers sleep health as a multidimensional concept and potential impairments in broad outcomes. Year 2: Using an intensive longitudinal design, study the dynamic interplay between sleep and circadian rhythms, and behaviour by contrasting healthy participants with standard schedules and healthy participants working under a rotating shift system; To explore the role of exposure to light mediating the impacts of sleep/circadian disturbances on affective experiences. Year 3: To model the impact of increasing sleep/circadian disruption on behaviour and the mediating or mitigating role of exposure to light.
Exposure to light as a mediator of the impacts of circadian disturbances on behaviour and affective experiences
Representative Publications
D’Oliveira, T. C. & Anagnostopoulos, A. (2020). The association between shift work and affective disorders: A systematic review, Chronobiology International, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2020.1838533
D’Oliveira, T. C. & Persico, L. (2023). Workplace isolation, loneliness, and wellbeing at work: The mediating role of task interdependence and supportive behaviours. Applied Ergonomics 103894. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2022.103894
Porffy, L.A., Bell, V., Coutrot, A., Wigton, R., D’Oliveira, T. Mareschal, I., & Shergill, S. S. (2020). In the eye of the beholder? Oxytocin effects on eye movements in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research. 216, 279-287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2019.11.044
Lavan, N., Chan, W. Y., Zhuang, Y., Mareschal, I., & Shergill, S. S. (2022). Direct eye gaze enhances the ventriloquism effect. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 84(7), 2293-2302. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-022-02468-5
Mirza, M.B., Cullen, M., Parr, T. et al. (2021). Contextual perception under active inference. Sci Rep 11, 16223. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95510-9
Porffy, L.A., Bell, V., Coutrot, A., Wigton, R., D’Oliveira, T. Mareschal, I., & Shergill, S. S. (2020). In the eye of the beholder? Oxytocin effects on eye movements in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research. 216, 279-287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2019.11.044