Unsung heroes – and pigeon-power

Unsung Heroes

Lighting professionals like to moan about their clients who ‘value engineer’ the value out of their vision to end up with a legal minimum.

So, I’ve been on a mission to find the exception that proves the rule: clients investing in circadian lighting in the uniquely demanding and cash-strapped residential care sector.

And, thanks to generous introductions from lighting manufacturers worldwide, I’ve started to meet a growing band of unsung heroes who have done just that.

Ed Russell, Chief Executive of Warwickshire Care Services and early adopter of circadian lighting, was recently awarded an OBE for his pioneering work. Ed puts his passionate determination to invest in circadian lighting down to his early life on a farm, where he noticed how red lighting reduced aggression among broiler chickens in the shed. When Ed shifted from his outdoor life to become a carer, spending much of his time indoors, he discovered the power of a SAD lamp to boost his mood.

We will hear from Lynne Green, who runs the Kirk House Care Home in a quiet Belfast suburb. This peaceful home combines low- and high-support flats that allow couples to stay together when one partner has dementia while the other is still able to live independently. Lynne hosted PhD student Kate Turley to test the potential for radio-wave sensors and AI algorithms integrated within a circadian lighting fixture that ‘learns’ how a resident moves and where they spend time.  Critically, this approach allows care teams to work from a shared reception area, removing the need for the two-hourly night-time checks  that inevitably disturb the residents’ sleep.  PhD sponsor, Ireland-based lighting company Skyjoy, and the Longitude Discovery Prize on Dementia funded the initial retrofit. But Lynne is set to extend the approach to other facilities on the strength of improvements to staff engagement and morale alone. 

The pioneering Dementia Research Centre in Stirling inspired Kim Crowe of Parkhaven Trust in Liverpool to work with lighting company Whitecroft to install a circadian system in one of her Care Homes. Kim funded the upgrade through a Regional Innovation Grant. She is confident she can raise investment for the next phase of implementation, explaining there is always a way to find the money if you know your ‘why’. As well as healthier, more peaceful residents, Kim has been able to change the way her staff are deployed, with fewer stressful emergency calls at night and more stimulating engagement during the day. 

Our final guest is Kirsten Sorensen-Gosvig, who runs a municipal care home in Denmark. Inspired by the original Dementia Village concept, Kirsten has worked with the specialist lighting team at Chromaviso for over a decade to design, install and manage the system. At the outset, Kirsten could only afford to install the controls and upgrade the lighting in one wing of the facility. Staff competed to work night shifts in the circadian lighting wing, explaining that the residents were calmer and that they slept better, too. Kirsten was woken one weekend by calls from her team complaining that a lightning strike had halted the dynamic cycle, leaving them with a static daytime setting. The team were so used to their new working conditions that they felt the old way was unsafe.  Partly thanks to Kirsten’s vision, determination, and ongoing collaboration with the Chromaviso team, circadian lighting is now standard across the municipality.

Please log in on the 5th of September to hear these remarkable clients talk about their work and their ‘why’ – register here.

From lab to life 

I’ve often wondered why there is so little high-quality applied lighting research in the Residential Care Sector, when, anecdotally at least, the benefits are so clear.  But maybe the reasons are simple:  participants are suffering from multiple health conditions already, so it’s hard to isolate the effects. The setting is unglamorous, and the sector, on the surface, at least, offers little commercial return.

And yet, there are remarkable scientists who have dedicated decades of their careers to this field, contributing to our understanding of how the right light at the right time can improve quality of life in those twilight years. Five of them have generously agreed to share their recent research with us online on the 5th of September. I do hope you will log in to join us, register here. A brief introduction is below:

Professor Russell Foster OBE set up the SCNII in Oxford and leads the team who is currently working with WCS Care to evaluate the impact of circadian lighting on sleep. Russell will also share his work with veterans to explore the potential for circadian lighting to help them to improve sleep and manage Post Traumatic Stress –  Trauma recovery: new science and technology for mental and physical health.

Professor Shadab Rahman of Harvard University is the lead author of the first large-scale study of its kind that linked a 43% reduction in falls in elderly residents with the introduction of circadian lighting. Shadab will share current work on dynamic lighting protocols and metabolism – Dynamic lighting schedules to facilitate circadian adaptation to shifted timing of sleep and wake,  Age-related changes in circadian regulation of the human plasma lipidome.

Professor Lenka Maierova, originally trained as an architect, leads interdisciplinary projects to explore the role of different elements of the built environment on older adults living with dementia.

Professor Elizabeth Flo-Groeneboom will round off our brief tour of pioneering scientists to share her work on light, colour and emotion regulation – Acute Effects of Light during Daytime on Central Aspects of Attention and Affect:A Systematic Review.

Bird brains v AI 

Pigeons aren’t known for their intelligence.

But maybe they’re not so bird-brained after al!

First, they have two fovea (or zones for detailed vision) in their retina (we’ve only got the one).

One fovea, known as the ‘red field’, gives them detailed binocular vision at the front (to direct pecking behaviour).

The other, the ‘yellow field’, helps them see over their shoulder – their visual field is a staggering 340 degrees! – Seeing the Forest for the Trees, and the Ground Below My Beak: Global and Local Processing in the Pigeon’s Visual System.

Pigeons use information from their eyes to ‘learn’ in the same way as AI.

They use a process known as ‘associative learning’

They look for tags or common features in an object to create groups or categories.

Then, they test the fit between the tag, object, and category using simple trial and error until they get it right.

That delivers a pop of dopamine, reinforcing the connection – Resolving the associative learning paradox by category learning in pigeons.

The category ’human’ is coded by just 33 neurons – The Pigeon as a Model of Complex Visual Processing and Category Learning.

Pigeons may be a pest, but they’re certainly not stupid!