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Portable sunshine: Earbuds that shine light into your ears
- tobylane 15y agoCommuters have plenty of artificial light around them. Cyclists and walkers would need this more, but it probably blocks out sound. The whole artificial sun-like light thing does make sense, but mostly as a bedroom light.
- mooism2 15y agoEven assuming this works reliably, £160 seems overpriced for what's basically a couple of small torches.
- The_Sponge 15y agoThis sort of thing just screams bullshit. Yes, I get that light therapy or whatever it's called is prescribed but somehow I doubt that two little LEDs shoved in your ears is anything close to a substitute.
- bugmenot 15y agoIf you are interested, check the scientific evidence at the bottom of this page: http://www.valkee.com/uk/science.html#navigation http://www.valkee.com/uk/science.html#navigation Reality does not necessarily conform to what we perceive as reality.
- stck 15y agoAt least there's a lot of pretty graphs on their website: http://www.valkee.com/uk/science.html#evidence http://www.valkee.com/uk/science.html#evidence
- milep 15y agoThese are aimed for people suffering the winter depression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder
- The_Sponge 15y agoThat's what I was thinking of. But, like I said, I doubt little ear lights are a substitute for giant light panels. Then again, maybe they are. It's just too suspicious.
- kilian 15y agoIt feels overpriced, but they're competing with daylight lamps, and those are in the 100 - 300 euro range, with most being around 200 euro (I'm currently looking for one, suggestions welcome!). So in that context, they're priced at market-rate.
- bad_user 15y agoYeah, but daylight lamps have the extraordinarily ability to light up an entire room.
- screwt 15y agoI think that's just a function of power. I have a daylight box that runs at 400W; it lights the room fine, and so does the 600W halogen. Funnily enough a 60W regular bulb doesn't really compare.
- rafd 15y agoOff-the-shelf incandescents should do the job: the resulting spectrum matches daylight best compared to other sources (you get close to full spectrum black body radiation, like from the sun). It just becomes a question of supplying enough, but a 100W lamp (or two) near your work area may be enough to boost your mood. I'm no expert on SAD, but from the lighting physics side, "daylight" lamps sound like a scam.
- screwt 15y agoI don't think you're right about incandescents - light from them is much yellower than from a full-spectrum bulb. Question: wouldn't an incandescent have to be at the same temp as the sun to produce the same colour black-body output? (Happy to be corrected here if I'm missing something.) At home we have a 600W halogen that is much yellower than our 400W daylight box. Subjectively the daylight bulb feels much more natural. That's not to say there are or aren't any benefits for SAD/depression of course. 'natural' until you look out the window to see it's dark, of course. For that reason I tend to prefer the halogen if I want light in the evening - the yellow tone provides plenty of light without trying to pretend that it's daytime.
- Achshar 15y agoHas any study been conducted about any possible side effects any such thing would have? after all if light to skull would have been so useful then evolution should have made it so. If it isn't so then either its of not much use or it has some bad effects too.
- FaceKicker 15y agoThat's not how evolution works. Are you saying humans are currently optimal in every possible way?
- Achshar 15y agoNo i am not saying that evolution leads to optimal development, but just that if it has such good implications then something should have happened in this regard, however small or trivial.
- sambeau 15y agoEvolution does not optimal development this is a general misunderstanding. Evolution is not 'survival of the fittest' it it 'survival of the just fit enough'. Darwin was clear about this, sadly the eugenics movement of the late Victorian age were not.
- Torn 15y agoYou misunderstand evolution. The idea is to be good enough to reproduce, not to be optimal. Hence why humans have loads of vestigial crap that serves no purpose.
- martinkallstrom 15y agoBut we also have stuff that serves a purpose but without which we would still be good enough to reproduce. Eyebrows for example, are a good shield for your eyes against snow and dust falling from above. I'm happy to have them. But I can't imagine survival ever depending on them. Or is their existence proof that humans at some point in evolution got a real advantage from eyebrows in regards to reproduction? (serious question, I'm not being sarcastic)
- pi18n 15y ago25 people is not a "clinical study". It is a survey.
- nodata 15y agoand 25 people is a small enough group that you can do just a few surveys, then pick the group that gives the results you wanted, all without spending very much money.
- sambeau 15y ago22/25 will not be caused by random error. That is either a significant find or a systematic error in method. It is also inconceivable that a University group like this would do that—If they did they would all be in serious trouble. Ten out of 13 patients (76.9%) achieved full remission Being that they used a sample of depression sufferers that is a pretty amazing result. It will be interesting to see what the double-blind survey finds.
- DanBC 15y ago> It is also inconceivable that a University group like this would do that—If they did they would all be in serious trouble. What? It is trivially easy to find awful research from universities. I've been involved (as a lay member of a research review panel) with university students who want to do clinical research. They come to the RRP with a proposal, and we walk through it and point out where they might have problems. It is amazing how many groups ignore things like small sample sizes or double blinding or control groups etc. Those are all basics that any student should have been aware of. And then there are the more subtle things like anonymising data or getting proper consent. Having said all that, this news release link (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bright-light-into-the-ear-canal-treats-seasonal-depression-effectively-in-two-clinical-trials-presented-by-valkee-and-university-of-oulu-133420808.html http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bright-light-into-th...) gives more information about methodology. Note that they're researching SAD, which is not depression, and is rarer. Most people with depression don't show great results from light boxes.
- aes 15y agoOnce they add the ability to play music they'll have a killer product in their hands.
- Tichy 15y agoWe'll see who has the last laugh, but for now I feel inclined to say "this is the stupidest thing I have ever heard"...
- sambeau 15y agoThe flip-side of this is that headphones may be causing depression in some people by blocking light from entering the brain through the ear canal. Perhaps we should all be taking our earbuds off on sunny days?
- jot 15y agoThere's a good discussion about these, including responses from the makers here: "Valkee Scam" http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2011/09/valkee-scam/ http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2011/09/valkee-scam/
- sambeau 15y agoI disagree with what this bit: The brain isn’t designed to get light in to it. If your brain is receiving light; there’s a hole in your head. That’s not healthy! The brain was not designed. There are a number of holes in your skull and your ears are two of them. Whether or not the brain reacts to light is either proven or disproven depending on whether you find a flaw in this research or can conduct research that finds against it.
- Tichy 15y agoIt just seems very unlikely - that reactivity to light would serve no purpose and hence could be optimized away. And I think there is something more than "either proven or disproven". If you claim you have an invisible dragon in your garage, it seems very unlikely that you are telling the truth. No need to run experiments for that. (brain and light might be more likely than invisible dragons, just making a point).
- makmanalp 15y agoI think it's unlikely too - however I think the point being made is that maybe it's not completely optimized away yet. We are not at the pinnacle of evolution such that every part we have serves a clear purpose.
- Tichy 15y agoMaybe a better argument would be the other way round: if that positive effect could be had by shining light on the brain, the skull would be more transparent. Anyway, yes, everything is possible. But I am not betting my money on this...
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- jpalomaki 15y agoSee for example this: http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/skins-eye-like-receptors-see-uv-light/ http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/skins-eye-like-receptors... "Skin is able to detect ultraviolet light by using a receptor previously thought to only exist in the eye." Having light sensitive cells inside your head (in other places than eyes) obviously sounds ridiculous if you believe in intelligent design. However if you think about evolution and how it works, I would say there is pretty good chance all our cells do not have just the functions they absolutely need to have.
- Tichy 15y agoYou seem to assume that skin cells don't need to detect ultraviolet light.
- zerostar07 15y agoSkin cells are not part of the nervous system, they apparently use rhodopsin just to regulate melanin. You can make any part of the brain photosensitive by injecting Channelrhodopsin viral vectors, that's an exciting recent experimental area called optogenetics.
- scarmig 15y agoIt's fairly difficult to pinpoint something that humans have that couldn't have been placed there intelligently. Evolution drives organisms, if at all possible, to co-opt anything that develops because of structural constraints. Most of the time it is possible. This class of traits is something that Steven J Gould named as evolutionary spandrels. So in practice, I would expect the ultraviolet receptors in the skin to have at least one meaningful function. The fact that exposing people to ultraviolet light changes their hormonal balance would tend to suggest this as well. They're definitely doing something. As a separate argument, a creationist could also provide some information theoretic arguments for why some cells have pointless features. Unnecessary complexity in a biological organism, like in any other computer program, is a dangerous risk. As risk management, we might want to handle that danger by accepting a harmless redundancy and not building an additional subsystem that chaotically interacts with all our other subsystems.
- sangfroid 15y agoI haven't read all of the comments here, but I come from a pretty good neuroscience background and have some thoughts on why this looks like baloney. It's about the way the brain works. The brain itself is not a sensory organ. It processes signals from sensory organs. Information reaches the eye or the skin or the tongue as mechanical, chemical, and optical data but then get transduced into an electrical impulse. Even if there were light receptors in the brain, it's highly unlikely that they would be so specific that activating them would cause positive feelings. That's how information gets processed at the level of our senses, but not in our brains. Individual neurons do not hold individual memories. Nor do they seem to control specific emotions. If shining light on the brain actually changed the levels of activity, it would have an impact on entire neural circuits, not just on this one process. At least, that's how I see it.