ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Luxotonic signals in human prefrontal cortex as a possible substrate for effects of light on mood and cognition.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effects of blue light during and after exposure on auditory working memory.Journal of physiological anthropology · 2025Trial
- A large-scale heterogeneous 3D magnetic resonance brain imaging dataset for self-supervised learning.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Associations between retinal morphological features and risk of depression and anxiety disorders.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- A novel theory of rapid eye movement sleep as an integral component of the seasonal timekeeping apparatus.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Effects of light on brain-state dynamics and energy landscape.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Relationships between light exposure and aspects of cognitive function in everyday life.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Light therapy for bipolar disorders: Clinical recommendations from the international society for bipolar disorders (ISBD) Chronobiology and Chronotherapy Task Force.Dialogues in clinical neuroscience · 2025Review
- Low-Intensity Constant Light During Early Postnatal Development Induces Sex-Specific Anxiety-Like Behaviour and Region- and Sex-Specific Changes in Circadian Gene Expression and RNA Editing.Cellular and molecular neurobiology · 2025Article
- Effectual Environmental Enrichments for Commercial Broiler Chickens.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
- ipRGCs Sensitive Blue Light Exposure Promotes the Robustness of Circadian and Neural Stem Cells in Sleep Deprived Conditions.Stem cells international · 2025Article
- Beyond vision: effects of light on the circadian clock and mood-related behaviours.Npj biological timing and sleep · 2025Review
- Prefrontal cortex neurons encode ambient light intensity differentially across regions and layers.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The cognitive impact of light: illuminating ipRGC circuit mechanisms.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2024Review
- Diurnal Variation of Brain Activity in the Human Suprachiasmatic Nucleus.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Light as a Modulator of Non-Image-Forming Brain Functions-Positive and Negative Impacts of Increasing Light Availability.Clocks & sleep · 2023Review
- Blue-Light-Blocking Lenses Ameliorate Structural Alterations in the Rodent Hippocampus.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Luxotonic signals in human prefrontal cortex as a possible substrate for effects of light on mood and cognition.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- The top 100 most cited papers in insomnia: A bibliometric analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Studies with experimental animals have revealed a mood-regulating neural pathway linking intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC), involved in the pathophysiology of mood disorders. Since humans also have light-intensity-encoding ipRGCs, we asked whether a similar pathway exists in humans. Here, functional MRI was used to identify PFC regions and other areas exhibiting light-intensity-dependent signals. We report 26 human brain regions having activation that either monotonically decreases or monotonically increases with light intensity. Luxotonic-related activation occurred across the cerebral cortex, in diverse subcortical structures, and in the cerebellum, encompassing regions with functions related to visual image formation, motor control, cognition, and emotion. Light suppressed PFC activation, which monotonically decreased with increasing light intensity. The sustained time course of light-evoked PFC responses and their susceptibility to prior light exposure resembled those of ipRGCs. These findings offer a functional link between light exposure and PFC-mediated cognitive and affective phenomena.
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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.