Trial reportScientific reports2019
Early evening light mitigates sleep compromising physiological and alerting responses to subsequent late evening light.
Trial report in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trial
- Reducing Test Anxiety: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study of Evening Bright Light Exposure in University Students.Depression and anxiety · 2025Trial
- Dietary Protocols to Promote and Improve Restful Sleep: A Narrative Review.Nutrition reviews · 2026Review
- Too noisy, too dark: sleep environment at a typical stroke unit.European stroke journal · 2026Article
- Afternoon to early evening bright light exposure reduces later melatonin production in adolescents.Npj biological timing and sleep · 2025Article
- Pupillometric and perceptual approaches provide independent estimates of melanopsin activity in humans.Sleep · 2025Article
- Reconsidering the spectral distribution of light: Do people perceive watts or photons?Lighting research & technology (London, England : 2001) · 2024Article
- Time-Dependent Effects of Altered Prebedtime Light Exposure in Enclosed Spaces on Sleep Performance Associated with Human States.Nature and science of sleep · 2024Article
- Light exposure differs by sex in the US, with females receiving less bright light.Npj biological timing and sleep · 2024Article
- The effects of psychological flexibility and night shifts on mental health and well-being in nurses.PloS one · 2024Article
- Smartphone addiction habit is positively associated with coronary artery disease and its severity in Chinese adults: a case-control study.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2024Article
- Article
- Melanopic metrics: Advancing the characterization of everyday light patterns.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Seasonal Variation in the Responsiveness of the Melanopsin System to Evening Light: Why We Should Report Season When Collecting Data in Human Sleep and Circadian Studies.Clocks & sleep · 2023Article
- Associations between light exposure and sleep timing and sleepiness while awake in a sample of UK adults in everyday life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Human-Centric Lighting Research and Policy in the Melanopsin Age.Policy insights from the behavioral and brain sciences · 2023Article
- TimeTeller for timing health: The potential of circadian medicine to improve performance, prevent disease and optimize treatment.Frontiers in digital health · 2023Article
- Recovery from shift work.Frontiers in neurology · 2023Review
- Objective Measures of Immediate "Energizing" Effect of Light: Studies Review and Data Analysis.Clocks & sleep · 2022Review
- Alerting effects of light in healthy individuals: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Neural regeneration research · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The widespread use of electric light and electronic devices has resulted in an excessive exposure to light during the late-evening and at night. This late light exposure acutely suppresses melatonin and sleepiness and delays the circadian clock. Here we investigate whether the acute effects of late-evening light exposure on our physiology and sleepiness are reduced when this light exposure is preceded by early evening bright light. Twelve healthy young females were included in a randomised crossover study. All participants underwent three evening (18:30-00:30) sessions during which melatonin, subjective sleepiness, body temperature and skin blood flow were measured under different light conditions: (A) dim light, (B) dim light with a late-evening (22:30-23:30) light exposure of 750 lx, 4000 K, and (C) the same late-evening light exposure, but now preceded by early-evening bright light exposure (18.30-21.00; 1200 lx, 4000 K). Late-evening light exposure reduced melatonin levels and subjective sleepiness and resulted in larger skin temperature gradients as compared to dim. Interestingly, these effects were reduced when the late-evening light was preceded by an early evening 2.5-hour bright light exposure. Thus daytime and early-evening exposure to bright light can mitigate some of the sleep-disruptive consequences of light exposure in the later evening.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.