Nurolight®: sleep, light and dementia
Sleep and dementia:
One of the many physiological processes affected by dementia is the circadian system –our sleep wake cycle. Poor sleep exacerbates symptoms of memory loss, can worsen cognitive decline and exacerbate agitation and aggression. There is also a high prevalence of sleep disturbance in caregivers. This is an important consideration because wherethe sleep of both the person with dementia and their caregiver is affected, supporting the person to remain at home becomes more challenging.
UKRI Funded research:
For 18 months, DSDC researchers have been assessing sleep, dementia and light. Our project, Nurolight®, assessed bright Light therapy – a form of using artificial light to retrain the natural sleep/wake cycle. Bright light therapy has demonstrated improvements in addressing the circadian disruption experienced in people with mild to moderate dementia with improvements in sleep duration, agitation, depression and appetite being reported. Equally, bright light therapy interventions in the home have also exhibited benefits to care partners.
We tested users subjective visual comfort levels using a variety of different lighting conditions with varying levels of illuminance. We also tested different methods of controlling the lights (both manual and digital).
Our lighting laboratory:
For the duration of the project we turned our Design and Technology Suite at the Iris Murdoch Building into a lighting laboratory, demonstrating 4 lighting scenes and methods of delivering bright light therapy, demonstrated to deliver benefits in sleep quality and duration.
Acknowledgements:
This research would not have been possible without the support and dedication of many people.
The project was funded by the UKRI Healthy Ageing Catalyst and Accelerator Awards and we are very grateful for the opportunity to receive funding and venture support from UKRI and ZINC VC.
We were very grateful to receive support from Fagerhult who donated a large tunable LED ceiling mounted luminaire to support the lighting trials.
Our multidisciplinary team comprised of Atelier Ten, Blinkio, Space Group and independent optometrist Sonia Pelan. The team were unwavering in their dedication to delivering on the project and we are very grateful.
Finally, we could not have undertaken this project without the time and commitment made by our volunteers. Thank you for your generosity of sprit and willingness to share your experiences.
Thank you.
Professor Lesley Palmer & Dr Junjie Huang