I have burned through so many morning candles already this year. That’s one of my usual remedies … to combat the grey daytime sky, the snowless grey ground, the leafless grey trees. It doesn’t tend to bother me, the grey. This year was different. This year it bothered me.
On one of those grey days last month, I found myself in an eyewear store, holding up to the window, against the backdrop of the grey sky, lenses of several colours — yellow, blue, green, pink. I was due for new prescription glasses, after all. I landed on the pink. And the verdict, as the grey skies have persisted? Those glasses do exactly what I want them to do. They work like a charm. They are fun. And the fun of them is good for my mood. Whether the colour of them affects my mood or not, is debatable, from what I could find in the research literature.
Something I found interesting, though, is a frequently cited article published in the Journal of Neuroscience (Schmitz, De Rosa and Anderson, 2009) about the visual cortex and mood. One of the authors describes the findings of their research as follows: “When in a positive mood, our visual cortex takes in more information … Good moods enhance the literal size of the window through which we see the world … Bad moods, on the other hand, may keep us more narrowly focused, preventing us from integrating information outside of our direct attentional focus.” (Science News, 2009).
Yes, I would like some of that visual cortex tinkering, please and thank you.
a few words ... from Montréal 