The Lighting Research Center (LRC) is recruiting participants over 15 years of age for a new study that will take place over the course of three weeks, one session each week.

This daytime study will be held from June 10 to July 3, 2019. The study will take place on weekdays (Monday to Friday) of those weeks. Participants may choose the day of the week they wish to attend.

The study will investigate the alerting effects of light by measuring brain activities under different light exposures using electroencephalogram (EEG) and through auditory performance tests done on a computer.

Participants need to attend all three scheduled sessions, unless they decide to withdraw from the experiment. In order to be eligible to participate in the experiment, participants need to have regular bed times no later than 11:00 p.m. and wake up no later than 8:00 a.m. This regular schedule must be kept throughout the study. Participants will be asked to wear an actigraph and keep a sleep log all the weeks of the study, starting one week before the study begins. If the actigraph data shows that the sleep schedule was not followed, the participant will not be allowed to continue in the study.

For each session, participants will arrive at the LRC at 1:00 p.m. for the EEG setup. EEG is a non-invasive, safe procedure to record brain activities. In order to obtain an accurate EEG measurement, it is necessary to clean small areas of the skin with alcohol wipes and apply a water-soluble paste and medical tape to attach electrodes to the scalp. The study will begin at 2:00 p.m. and will be conducted for two hours. During each session, four sets of 3-minute EEG measurements, performance testing, and subjective responses will be collected.

One week prior to the start of the experiment, participants will come to the LRC for a one-hour training session during regular business hours (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) and are given an actigraph to wear and a sleep log to complete.

Exclusions: Persons cannot participate in the experiment if they have any major health problems or are colorblind. Persons will not be eligible to participate in the study if they are taking any prescription medication (except for birth control pills), if they are night shift workers, or if they will be traveling more than one time zone the month before or during the weeks of the experiment.

Participants will be paid $40 for each session – a total of $120 for completing all three weeks of the study. Payment will be processed by Rensselaer after each session. If a participant is not a U.S. citizen, taxes will be withheld from payment. Graduate students who are financially supported by RPI will receive their payment in Visa gift cards. Persons interested in participating in the study should contact Madison Laks at [email protected] or (518) 276-7112 for more information.