Environmental Neuroscience and Seasonal Affective Disorder

The people we encounter, the communities we interact with, the climate where we live, and the urban landscape of our hometown create unique social and physical environments that vary from person to person. While there is a great amount of diversity in the types of environments that people live in, what’s universally true is that our environment massively impacts our behavior and emotions. Our brains are affected by our environment, and conversely, the way we think and act affects our environment. The field of environmental neuroscience investigates this bidirectional relationship between an organism’s neural processes and its environment (M. Berman et al. 2019). Because certain aspects of the environment are known to cause psychological and physical detriments in the brain, studies of how the brain is biologically affected by our environment will improve mental health. One example of a negative effect of the environment on the brain is seasonal affective disorder (SAD), as discussed in a recent Medical News Today article.

SAD occurs when a person develops seasonally dependent symptoms of depression, including persistent sadness and tiredness, coinciding with fall and winter. This disorder is believed to be a result of shortened days causing less exposure to sunlight (R. Berman 2022). Therefore, one of the more effective treatments to alleviate the symptoms of SAD is shining a clinically approved bright light in the morning or early afternoon. This mimics sunlight, which is a very important circadian signal that helps align a person’s rhythmic biological processes to the time of day, and helps improve mood and energy levels. 

The onset of SAD is extremely contingent upon the environment of the person developing these symptoms. Dr. Sandra Rosenthal, a professor of chemistry, pharmacology, and chemical and biomolecular engineering at Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, explained, “Cities at the same latitude can have very different rates of change of solar insolation due to climate, so onset and abatement of symptoms [depend] very much on where you live (R. Berman 2022).” Not only does the weather and time of year affect whether a person develops SAD, but also the specific region a person lives in differentially affects a person’s likelihood to develop this disorder.

Because of the close relationship between SAD and the environment, studying SAD through the lens of environmental neuroscience would be highly beneficial. One aim of environmental neuroscience is to understand the interactions among hierarchical levels of neuroscience. These levels include proteins, neurons, whole brains, people, and societies (M. Berman et al. 2019). It is believed that the symptoms of SAD occur as a result of complicated changes in brain chemistry and neuronal circuitry (R. Berman 2022). This means that increased darkness in the environment triggers harmful effects on cellular and subcellular components of the brain. However, little is known about exactly what those changes are in humans. Environmental neuroscience and this field’s emphasis on investigating environmental effects across multiple levels of the brain would be worth pursuing. Environmental neuroscience could provide a deeper understanding of SAD that people who suffer from the disorder would benefit from.

 

Works Cited

Berman, Marc G., Andrew J. Stier, and Gaby N. Akcelik. “Environmental Neuroscience.” American Psychologist 74.9 (2019): 1039–1052. American Psychologist. Web.

Berman, Robby. “Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): How to Beat It This Fall and Winter.” Medical News Today, MediLexicon International, 7 Oct. 2022, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/seasonal-affective-disorder-depression-how-to-beat-sad-2022-fall-winter.