The DOI matches its Crossref record; 53 of the 53 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Spectral quality of light modulates emotional brain responses in humans.
Open accessAbstract
Light therapy can be an effective treatment for mood disorders, suggesting that light is able to affect mood state in the long term. As a first step to understand this effect, we hypothesized that light might also acutely influence emotion and tested whether short exposures to light modulate emotional brain responses. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, 17 healthy volunteers listened to emotional and neutral vocal stimuli while being exposed to alternating 40-s periods of blue or green ambient light. Blue (relative to green) light increased responses to emotional stimuli in the voice area of the temporal cortex and in the hippocampus. During emotional processing, the functional connectivity between the voice area, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus was selectively enhanced in the context of blue illumination, which shows that responses to emotional stimulation in the hypothalamus and amygdala are influenced by both the decoding of vocal information in the voice area and the spectral quality of ambient light. These results demonstrate the acute influence of light and its spectral quality on emotional brain processing and identify a unique network merging affective and ambient light information.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Research has shown that blue light can regulate brain regions associated with SAD, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus, promoting the activation of positive emotions and modulating the brain’s emotional responses.[13]”
From Effectiveness of visible light for seasonal affective disorder: A systematic review and network meta-analysis (2025) · cites this paper as [13]
Citations
Cites
Contributions of the Amygdala to Emotion Processing: From Animal Models to Human Behavior
Phelps, E. A., & LeDoux, J. E. (2005) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2005.09.025 · Cited by 3,203 · cited 5×
“Although the auditory task did not explicitly engage declarative memory, the hippocampus, which is also involved in fear conditioning (19), was recruited by the auditory emotional task and signi fi cantly more so in the context of ambient blue light exposure relative to green light exposure.”
InfluentialHypothalamic regulation of sleep and circadian rhythms
Saper, C. B., Scammell, T. E., & Lu, J. (2005) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature04284 · Cited by 2,804
Voice-selective areas in human auditory cortex
Belin, P., Zatorre, R. J., Lafaille, P., Ahad, P. A., & Pike, G. B. (2000) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35002078 · Cited by 1,789
Neurocircuitry of Mood Disorders
Price, J. L., & Drevets, W. C. (2010) · Neuropsychopharmacology · doi:10.1038/npp.2009.104 · Cited by 1,606
Acoustic profiles in vocal emotion expression
Banse, R., & Scherer, K. R. (1996) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.614 · Cited by 1,546
The amygdala: Neurobiological aspects of emotion, memory, and mental dysfunction.
Aggleton, J. P. (1992) · Wiley-Liss eBooks · Cited by 1,536
A subcortical pathway to the right amygdala mediating “unseen” fear
Morris, J. S., Öhman, A., & Dolan, R. J. (1999) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.96.4.1680 · Cited by 1,349
Dacey, D. M., Liao, H.-W., Peterson, B. B., Robinson, F. R., Smith, V. C., Pokorny, J., Yau, K.-W., & Gamlin, P. D. (2005) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature03387 · Cited by 1,333
A Novel Human Opsin in the Inner Retina
Provencio, I., Rodriguez, I. R., Jiang, G., Hayes, W. P., Moreira, E. F., & Rollag, M. D. (2000) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.20-02-00600.2000 · Cited by 1,290
The amygdala: Neurobiological aspects of emotion, memory and mental dysfunction
Scheel-Krüger, J. (1993) · Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy · doi:10.1016/0891-0618(93)90037-5 · Cited by 1,281
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- CB Saper, Hypothalamus. The Human Nervous System, ed G Paxinos (Academic, New York, 1990).
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Light as a central modulator of circadian rhythms, sleep and affect
LeGates, T. A., Fernandez, D. C., & Hattar, S. (2014) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn3743 · Cited by 1,001
Aberrant light directly impairs mood and learning through melanopsin-expressing neurons
LeGates, T. A., Altimus, C. M., Wang, H., Lee, H.-K., Yang, S., Zhao, H., Kirkwood, A., Weber, E. T., & Hattar, S. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11673 · Cited by 577
Light Affects Mood and Learning through Distinct Retina-Brain Pathways
Fernandez, D. C., Fogerson, P. M., Lazzerini Ospri, L., Thomsen, M. B., Layne, R. M., Severin, D., Zhan, J., Singer, J. H., Kirkwood, A., Zhao, H., et al. (2018) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2018.08.004 · Cited by 505
Color and emotion: effects of hue, saturation, and brightness
Wilms, L., & Oberfeld, D. (2017) · Psychological Research · doi:10.1007/s00426-017-0880-8 · Cited by 452
Smolders, K. C. H. J., de Kort, Y. A. W., & Cluitmans, P. J. M. (2012) · Physiology & Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2012.04.028 · Cited by 353
Metadata
- Authors
- Vandewalle, G., Schwartz, S., Grandjean, D., Wuillaume, C., Balteau, E., Degueldre, C., Schabus, M., Phillips, C., Luxen, A., Dijk, D. J., & Maquet, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Liège (BE)
- University of Geneva (CH)
- University of Surrey (GB)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2010-10-25
- Volume
- 107
- Issue
- 45
- Pages
- 19549-19554
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC2984196
- OpenAlex
- W2151796987
- Cited by
- 255
- References
- 53
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 33 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 11
- FWCI
- 5.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Surrey Research Insight Open Access (The University of Surrey) (submittedVersion)
- Open Research (University of Surrey) (submittedVersion)
- ORBi (University of Liège) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (submittedVersion)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Endocrine and Autonomic Systems › Circadian rhythm and melatonin
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Color perception and design
- Keywords
- light spectrum, blue light, green light, emotional processing, amygdala, hypothalamus, hippocampus, functional connectivity, mood disorders, phototherapy, emotional speech perception
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Amygdala, Brain, Emotions, Female, Humans, Hypothalamus, Light, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Phototherapy, Voice, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
