Recent Zzzzz News:

Take off your sleep-tinted glasses

What's your view of the world? Has it been looking greenish lately? Ever wonder if you see things differently - not just feel crappy, or sluggish, or slo-mo - when you've been short-changing the amount of sleep you get? And yes, there's some real sleep research into lack of sleep and how it 'colors' your view of the world. We found out from our buddies over at the COLOURlovers blog.


Image credit: Sofia Cordova Vega

Color perception drifts away from neutrality during wakefulness and is restored during sleep. A research abstract about how sleep can color your world was presented at SLEEP 2010, the 24th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC. Results indicate that prior wakefulness caused the color gray to be classified as having a slightly but significantly greenish tint. Overnight sleep restored perception to achromatic equilibrium so that gray was perceived as gray. According to the authors, scientists had not previously investigated how sleep might affect the way we view the world around us.

"This is among the first studies to investigate the effects of sleep on perception," said principal investigator and lead author Bhavin Sheth, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston in Texas. "Our findings suggest that wakefulness causes color classification to drift away from neutrality, and sleep restores color classification to neutral."

The study involved five people who viewed a full-field image of either slightly reddish or greenish hue. The observers had to judge whether the image was greener or redder than their internal perception of neutral gray. Across trials the hue was varied. One pair of tests was performed just before participants went to sleep, and testing was repeated after participants slept for an average of 7.7 hours.

So, yes, sleep may indeed color your view of the world. . .
The SLEEP 2010 abstract supplement is available for download at http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstractSupplement.aspx.

A joint venture of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society, the annual SLEEP meeting brings together an international body of more than 5,000 leading clinicians and scientists in the fields of sleep medicine and sleep research. At SLEEP 2010 more than 1,100 research abstract presentations showcased new findings that contribute to the understanding of sleep and the effective diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders such as insomnia, narcolepsy and sleep apnea.

Leave a Comment: