Is it just me or is it dark in here?

We can't have that! Here's why.

A while back I bought an extremely bright, $35 light therapy lamp for my home office, which is also technically our attic.

As it happens our house was owned 30 years ago by a big-time New York City talent agent who used the same space as an office. I’m told that her clients, like the late comedian Sam Kinison and a few other celebrities, were up there at times to sign contracts and do whatever else people like that did in attics back then.

It’s a pretty decent space, but the lighting could use some work. Hence the therapy lamp—and hence, also, my interest in the following study.

Photo by Alex Zaj on Unsplash

It came out a few years ago, when Michigan State University researchers said they’d determined that working in dim lighting can “change the brain's structure and hurt one's ability to remember and learn,” according to a university press release.

Any time someone talks about external factors changing the brain’s structure, I’m likely to pay attention.

The study tracked the brains of Nile grass rats in a lab experiment:

• Half the animals were kept in an environment where the lights were dim, simulating what humans might encounter in typical office lighting.

• The other half were kept in an environment with much brighter lighting—think of a sunny day outside.

Results: The animals that were kept in dimmer light “lost about 30 percent of capacity in the hippocampus, a critical brain region for learning and memory, and performed poorly on a spatial task they had trained on previously.”

“This is similar to when people can't find their way back to their cars in a busy parking lot after spending a few hours in a shopping mall or movie theater,” said Antonio Nunez, a psychology professor and co-author of the study, which was published in the journal Hippocampus.

Quick digression: I kind of love that the journal is literally called Hippocampus.

Anyway, the results comported with expectations. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the researchers believe that reduced lighting led to a significant reduction in a brain substance called “brain derived neurotrophic factor.”

Reducing that substance makes it more difficult for neurons to connect with one another in the brain.

“Since there are fewer connections being made, this results in diminished learning and memory performance,” explained Joel Soler, a doctoral graduate student who was the study's lead author. “In other words, dim lights are producing dimwits.”

So, what to do with this information?

Actually, I find it kind of soothing. Believe me, I have my “what the heck was I working on five minutes ago?” moments. I appreciate having something like poor lighting to blame it on.

I’d hasten to add that the therapy light works wonders, too.

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7 other things worth knowing today

• Investors hammered technology stocks on Monday, sending the likes of Nvidia and Oracle plummeting, as the emergence of a low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model cast doubts on dominance of U.S. companies in this sector. Startup DeepSeek last week launched a free assistant it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of incumbent players' models, possibly marking a turning point in the level of investment needed for AI. (Reuters)

• A memorial service to mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops was taking place Monday at the site of the former death camp, a ceremony that is widely being treated as the last major observance that any notable number of survivors will be able to attend. Nazi German forces murdered some 1.1 million people at the site in southern Poland, which was under German occupation during World War II. (CBS News)

• Changes arrived at Starbucks Monday, including a new code of conduct, the return of condiment bars, and free refills on drip coffee. Caveat: you have to bring your own cup for free refills. (Axios)

• New York City Mayor Eric Adams will have a “limited public schedule” this week due to a series of doctors’ appointments. The mayor, 64, won’t be out and about much while he stops by doctors’ offices and undergoes “routine medical tests,” Deputy Mayor for Communications Fabien Levy said in a statement just before 11 p.m. — without revealing details about the mayor’s health struggles. (NY Post)

• Working Americans turn to food banks as the Fed's inflation battle drags on. (Bloomberg)

• Thieves used explosives to blast their way into a Dutch museum and steal four 2,500-year-old (and utterly priceless) pieces of Romanian jewellery, including three gold and silver bracelets and the exhibit's central piece: the strikingly decorated Helmet of Cotofenesti. Drents Museum director Harry Tupan said staff were "intensely shocked" by the burglary, which he said was the biggest incident in its 170-year history. (BBC)

• Something about this story got me, maybe because it's a thing I know nothing about: The Manitoulin, a 663-foot Canadian freighter with 17 people on board, was on its way back to Canada after it was freed from ice that trapped it in a frozen Lake Erie starting last Wednesday. Two U.S. Coast Guard ships and a Canadian Coast Guard ship freed the freighter after an effort lasting several days. (AP)