Toward an Indoor Lighting Solution for Social Jet Lag

There is growing interest in developing artificial lighting that stimulates intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) to entrain circadian rhythms to improve mood, sleep, and health. Efforts have focused on stimulating the intrinsic photopigment, melanopsin; however, specialized color vision circuits have been elucidated in the primate retina that transmit blue-yellow cone-opponent signals to ipRGCs. We designed a light that stimulates color-opponent inputs to ipRGCs by temporally alternating short- and long-wavelength components that strongly modulate short-wavelength sensitive (S) cones. Two-hour exposure to this S-cone modulating light produced an average circadian phase advance of 1 h and 20 min in 6 subjects (mean age = 30 years) compared to no phase advance for the subjects after exposure to a 500 lux white light equated for melanopsin effectiveness. These results are promising for developing artificial lighting that is highly effective in controlling circadian rhythms by invisibly modulating cone-opponent circuits.