Lightcap 2: Basics of light and its effects on humans

Course Overview

Light is one of our most valuable resources on this earth. It makes the world visible to us, is the major driver of the 24-hr sleep-wake cycle to which not only humans, but virtually all life on earth (fauna and flora) submits. In fact, there would be no life on earth without light. It is therefore hard to overestimate the impact light has on humans, biologically, psychologically, socially. And yet, we hardly ever think or speak about light. LIGHTCAP’s 2 “Basics of light and its effects on humans: Light, cognition, alertness, sleep” covers light as a physical phenomenon and introduces important psychological and chronobiological outcomes – how to measure them and how light acts on them. The course is one in a series of four, each with a different disciplinary basis and with complementary perspectives to the domain of light for humans. The basis of this course is a combination of physics, psychology and chronobiology. In this course you will: (1) be introduced to important concepts such as cognition, alertness and sleepiness and self-report tools to measure them (2) learn what light is. What standard light sources have been defined by the CIE and how we measure light (3) learn how light is processed in human eyes and be introduced to new measures of light since the discovery of the ipRGC (4) learn how psychophysiology responds to light and how we measure these responses (5) be introduced to EEG as a method of measuring cognition and alertness (6) see how EEG is being applied in light research and learn about basics of EEG data visualisation and interpretation (7) learn about the link between light and sleep health (8) understand in greater depth the impact of light on sleep health and learn that there may be important individual differences in non-visual light sensitivity