By Staff Writer (media@latinospost.com) | First Posted: Apr 19, 2015 04:51 PM EDT

The color of your bedroom might affect your sleeping and waking hours.

The American Register reported that researchers at the University of Manchester discovered that color has a vital role in regulating the internal clock of the human body. The internal clock is important to human beings because it indicates the times when a person should sleep, eat, wake up and do other activities.

The research was done on mice and showed that light or dark has an effect on the circadian rhythms of the body. The mice were exposed to various visual stimuli. According to the researchers, neurons are more sensitive to color changes between blue and yellow compared to changes in brightness. The Silver Ink reported that changes were observed in the light intensity during sunrise, sunset and twilight when the light is bluer, compared to other times of the day.

An artificial sky was made using several LED lights put behind a screen that diffuses the light. The subject mice were nocturnal so their circadian rhythms would normally increase their body temperature at night. The research team discovered that when the mice were put under the artificial sky for many days, their body temperatures would peak just a little after dusk. At dusk, the artificial sky was blue, showing that the mice's body clocks were working at optimum levels. When the color of the artificial sky was changed by the researchers, the internal clocks of the nocturnal animals became confused and their temperatures would peak 30 minutes earlier than usual.

Dr. Timothy Brown, the leader of the study, said in the same report by The Silver Ink, "This is the first time that we've been able to test the theory that color affects our body clock in any mammal. It has always been very hard to separate the change in color to the change in brightness but using new experimental tools and a psychophysics approach we were successful."

Dr. Brown also shared about how the findings of the study could play an important role among human beings. He said, "What's exciting about our research is that the same findings can be applied to humans. So, in theory, color could be used to manipulate our clock, which could be useful for shift workers or travelers wanting to minimize jet lag."

He said in a report by ScienceMag, "What this opens up is the possibility for enhancing existing ways of treating jet lag or things like seasonal depression disorder."

Here's a related video on how the Circadian Rhythm works from SciShow.

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