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Researchers Connect Visual Perception With Sleep
By
Erin D. McKenzie
Sheth
Sheth

Work highlighted in leading sleep journal

Perhaps just as pressing as discovering how the brain works or what drives evolution is why we spend a third of our lives asleep.

Among some of the greatest scientific mysteries, sleep has been directly linked to our memory, learning and immune systems. Now, two University of Houston researchers believe it could be affecting the way we view the world.

In a new study featured in the journal SLEEP, Bhavin Sheth, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Scott Stevenson, an associate professor in the College of Optometry, correlate sleep with restoring color perception.

“It turns out that during the course of the time a person is awake gray appears greenish,” said Sheth. “First thing in morning after you wake, however, gray appears gray. Sleep resets absolute color perception.”

In the study, participants were asked to judge whether or not a series of randomly presented images appeared more green or red than their internal perception of the color gray. Data were collected before going to bed and then again when they woke up, approximately eight hours later. 

The results of these trials were then compared against another test in a further attempt to prove sleep was behind the resetting.

To do this, the researchers, along with two undergraduate students, constructed a device that used LED lights to mimic the stimuli experienced by someone awake. But the device, which flashed red lights through one eyelid while the person slept, had no effect.

“Every time, participants showed the resetting effect,” Sheth said. “Sleep has many restorative functions for the mind and body, so far, our results are consistent with that.”

More work will be done in the coming months, Sheth said, to fully understand the phenomenon. This includes looking at the minimum amount of sleep necessary to achieve the effect, the role each particular stage of sleep plays in resetting and the importance of the effect in children.

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