The journal of Sleep recently published a paper by Allen et al. looking at the impact of certain light from devices and the impact this has on our melatonin production. Melatonin is associated with our sleep cycle, the more melatonin, the more likely we are to sleep. It is also influenced by light receptors (melanopsin) in our eyes. Bright light from devices can reduce the amount of melatonin we produce.
Annette Allen and her team showed subjects a movie with and without cyan light. The colours of the movie were otherwise the same, just the colour of the light was different. What they found was that with no cyan light the subjects had more melatonin, and felt more tired. With cyan light, they had less melatonin and felt more awake. They propose that in time this research may give some motivation to create melnopic displays capable of increasing or decreasing the amount of cyan light.
Citation:
Annette E Allen, Esther M Hazelhoff, Franck P Martial, Christian Cajochen, Robert J Lucas; Exploiting metamerism to regulate the impact of a visual display on alertness and melatonin suppression independent of visual appearance, Sleep, , zsy100, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsy100
