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Bright light therapy is an effective treatment option for seasonal and non-seasonal affective disorders. However up to now, no study has investigated effects of dynamic bedroom lighting in hospitalized patients with major depression. A bedroom lighting system, which automatically delivered artificial dawn and dusk and blue-depleted nighttime lighting (DD-N lighting) was installed in a psychiatric ward. Patients with moderate to severe depression were randomly assigned to stay in bedrooms with the new lighting or standard lighting system. Patients wore wrist actimeters during the first two treatment weeks. Additionally, hospitalization duration and daily psychotropic medication were retrieved from patients’ medical charts. Data from thirty patients, recorded over a period of two weeks, were analyzed. Patients under DD-N lighting generally woke up earlier (+ 20 min), slept longer (week 1: + 11 min; week 2: + 27 min) and showed higher sleep efficiency (+ 2.4%) and shorter periods of nighttime awakenings (− 15 min). In the second treatment week, patients started sleep and the most active 10-h period earlier (− 33 min and − 64 min, respectively). This pilot study gives first evidence that depressed patients’ sleep and circadian rest/activity system may benefit from bedroom lighting when starting inpatient treatment.

Work processes and sociological structures can differ significantly between organizations. These organizational aspects determine user behavior, which in turn exerts considerable influence on the key performance indicators of artificial lighting systems. Accordingly, the use of generalized assumptions about user behavior in the building design phase can lead to large discrepancies between design and operation. In the following work, the possible influences of different occupancy schemes, an essential aspect of user behavior and shaped by the organization, on energy demand and workplace-related daylight dose are evaluated. For this purpose, calculations are made based on real measurement data of an open-plan office with zoned lighting. Multi-level calculation models are used to determine improved user distributions in the room to ensure optimization according to the desired target criteria. The results show that occupancy schemes have a significant impact on energy demand, contributing significantly to overall building performance, but only slightly to workplace-related light exposure rates in terms of total daily light dose. A correlated influence on the target criteria could not be demonstrated, but given the minor influence on daily light dose, the optimization of planning and operation can be focused on energy efficiency.

Attention is essential to the work. This study investigated the effects of two different light pulses on a simple attention task. In addition, the effects of subsequent exposure to constant but different illuminance levels on the continuation of the simple attention task and a subsequent complex attention task were examined. A total of 56 subjects were assigned in random order to two white light interventions that were repeated five times during the morning. Each light intervention consisted of a brief light pulse followed by constant light exposure and differed in temporal dimming dynamics and corneal illuminance. Subjective and psychometric parameters were recorded several times during light exposure. Heart rate variability (HRV) was derived from continuous electrocardiograms. Subjects showed improved reaction speed in the simple attention task, accompanied by higher HRV under a brighter light pulse without habituation by repetition. This difference in simple attention performance disappeared when light exposure remained the same after the light pulse. In addition, higher reaction speed and HRV were observed in the complex attention task under constant bright light exposure. Intermittent bright light seems promising to acutely improve attentional performance in office workplaces. Future research is needed to investigate daytime light effects on other work-related cognitive functions.

Many physiological signals yield fractal characteristics, i.e., finer details at higher magnifications resemble details of the whole. Evidence has been accumulating that such fractal scaling is basically a consequence of interaction-dominant feedback mechanisms that cooperatively generate those signals. Neurodegenerative diseases provide a natural framework to evaluate this paradigm when this cooperative function declines. However, methodological issues need to be cautiously taken into account in order to be able to provide reliable as well as valid interpretations of such signal analyses. Two conceptually different fractal analyses, i.e., detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and analysis of cumulative distributions of durations (CDDs), are applied to actigraphy data of 36 geriatric in-patients diagnosed with dementia. The impact of the used time resolution for data acquisition on the assessed fractal outcome parameters is particularly investigated. Moreover, associations between these parameters and scores from the Mini-Mental-State-Examination and circadian activity parameters are explored. Both analyses yield significant deviations from (mono-)fractal scaling over the entire considered time range. DFA provides robust measures for the observed break-down of fractal scaling. In contrast, analysis of CDDs results in measures which highly fluctuate with respect to the time resolution of the assessed data which affects also further derived quantities such as scaling exponents or associations with other (clinically relevant) assessed parameters. To scrutinize actigraphic signal characteristics and especially their (deviations from) fractal scaling may be a useful tool for aiding diagnosis, characterization, and monitoring of dementia. However, results may, besides contextual aspects, also substantially depend on specific methodological choices. In order to arrive at both reliable and valid interpretations, these complications need to be carefully elaborated in future research.

In this paper we present some of the challenges faced when upscaling optical microstructures from a lab scale 1x1 cm sized proof of concept sample to a square meter sized object that can be installed in a building. The optical microstructure in question is obtained by a chain of fabrication steps, all linked with each other and with a certain level of complexity. Each of the total of 8 distinct steps presented difficulties that will be briefly introduced in this paper. On a less technical level, long term commitment of public funding and industrial partners was the base for the first upscaling of this complex technologies for pilot production. Taking the best from two worlds: industry and academia has proven effective in the development of such a novel technology.

One's own name constitutes a unique part of conscious awareness - but does this also hold true for unconscious processing? The present study shows that the own name has the power to bias a person's actions unconsciously even in conditions that render any other name ineffective. Participants judged whether a letter string on the screen was a name or a non-word while this target stimulus was preceded by a masked prime stimulus. Crucially, the participant's own name was among these prime stimuli and facilitated reactions to following name targets whereas the name of another, yoked participant did not. Signal detection results confirmed that participants were not aware of any of the prime stimuli, including their own name. These results extend traditional findings on \"breakthrough\" phenomena of personally relevant stimuli to the domain of unconscious processing. Thus, the brain seems to possess adroit mechanisms to identify and process such stimuli even in the absence of conscious awareness.

Arrow cues and other overlearned spatial symbols automatically orient attention according to their spatial meaning. This renders them similar to exogenous cues that occur at stimulus location. Exogenous cues trigger shifts of attention even when they are presented subliminally. Here, we investigate to what extent the mechanisms underlying the orienting of attention by exogenous cues and by arrow cues are comparable by analyzing the effects of visible and masked arrow cues on attention. In Experiment 1, we presented arrow cues with overall 50% validity. Visible cues, but not masked cues, lead to shifts of attention. In Experiment 2, the arrow cues had an overall validity of 80%. Now both visible and masked arrows lead to shifts of attention. This is in line with findings that subliminal exogenous cues capture attention only in a top-down contingent manner, that is, when the cues fit the observer's intentions.

When objects denoted by target words are classified as belonging to a certain category (e.g., to be either small or large) responding is faster when the target word is preceded by a masked prime word belonging to the same rather than a different category. Recently, there has been some controversy on whether such masked priming effects are confined to primes that are practised as targets as well, or whether they transfer to other novel prime words. We report data which show that the transfer of unconscious priming to unpractised stimuli depends on the size of the target set. Priming does transfer to novel (unpractised) primes with a large target set (40 different target words), whereas no transfer to novel primes occurs with a small target set (4 different target words). We conclude that the size and structure of the target set crucially determine the way participants handle a task and thus, determine how unconscious stimuli are processed.