Portable sunshine: Earbuds that shine light into your ears

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/02/start/portable-sunshine

by Juha • 15 years ago

51 54 15 years ago

wired.co.uk

mooism2• 15 years ago

Even assuming this works reliably, £160 seems overpriced for what's basically a couple of small torches.

The_Sponge2• 15 years ago

This sort of thing just screams bullshit. Yes, I get that light therapy or whatever it's called is prescribed but somehow I doubt that two little LEDs shoved in your ears is anything close to a substitute.

stck• 15 years ago

At least there's a lot of pretty graphs on their website: http://www.valkee.com/uk/science.html#evidence

milep• 15 years ago

These are aimed for people suffering the winter depression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder

kilian• 15 years ago

It feels overpriced, but they're competing with daylight lamps, and those are in the 100 - 300 euro range, with most being around 200 euro (I'm currently looking for one, suggestions welcome!). So in that context, they're priced at market-rate.

bad_user• 15 years ago

Yeah, but daylight lamps have the extraordinarily ability to light up an entire room.

rafd2• 15 years ago

Off-the-shelf incandescents should do the job: the resulting spectrum matches daylight best compared to other sources (you get close to full spectrum black body radiation, like from the sun). It just becomes a question of supplying enough, but a 100W lamp (or two) near your work area may be enough to boost your mood. I'm no expert on SAD, but from the lighting physics side, "daylight" lamps sound like a scam.

Achshar3• 15 years ago

Has any study been conducted about any possible side effects any such thing would have? after all if light to skull would have been so useful then evolution should have made it so. If it isn't so then either its of not much use or it has some bad effects too.

FaceKicker2• 15 years ago

That's not how evolution works. Are you saying humans are currently optimal in every possible way?

Achshar3• 15 years ago

No i am not saying that evolution leads to optimal development, but just that if it has such good implications then something should have happened in this regard, however small or trivial.

Torn• 15 years ago

You misunderstand evolution. The idea is to be good enough to reproduce, not to be optimal. Hence why humans have loads of vestigial crap that serves no purpose.

martinkallstrom• 15 years ago

But we also have stuff that serves a purpose but without which we would still be good enough to reproduce. Eyebrows for example, are a good shield for your eyes against snow and dust falling from above. I'm happy to have them. But I can't imagine survival ever depending on them. Or is their existence proof that humans at some point in evolution got a real advantage from eyebrows in regards to reproduction? (serious question, I'm not being sarcastic)

Achshar3• 15 years ago

Apart from reproduction it also applies to survival. And feeling good is clearly on the side of supporting survival. Take tails for example, it does not provide any reproductive support (i believe) and it was unnecessary since we started walking on ground instead of trees so it eventually went away. Same for gills. All i am saying is that if it had good enough use, it would have made some development in the regard however small or trivial it may be.

Also my first question was regarding its side effects, evolution is just something i used to support my question, but my question in general still remains unanswered..

pi18n• 15 years ago

25 people is not a "clinical study". It is a survey.

nodata• 15 years ago

and 25 people is a small enough group that you can do just a few surveys, then pick the group that gives the results you wanted, all without spending very much money.

sambeau10• 15 years ago

22/25 will not be caused by random error. That is either a significant find or a systematic error in method.

It is also inconceivable that a University group like this would do that—If they did they would all be in serious trouble.

  Ten out of 13 patients (76.9%) achieved full remission

Being that they used a sample of depression sufferers that is a pretty amazing result.

It will be interesting to see what the double-blind survey finds.

sambeau10• 15 years ago

You'd be amazed by how many medical studies uses such small sample sizes.

Often its for a good reason for instance when looking at the effectiveness of a surgical procedure in a sub-group or the treatment for a reasonably rare condition. Sometimes it is because of the need to use a random or carefully selected bias group.

But, as a one-time criminologist's statistician used to samples in 1000s (or 100s at least), I have often concluded that it was just bad science.

FaceKicker2• 15 years ago

The sample size has nothing to do with the distinction between a survey and a study, as far as I know. Either could have a small sample size or a large sample size.

If they got a statistically significant result given some alpha value, then that's a valid result, assuming the experiment itself was set up in a valid way (random sampling, controlled, double blind, etc.). Statistical significance tests take the sample size into account. A large enough difference can make up for a small sample size, and vice versa.

regandersong• 15 years ago

Their most recent study presented at a conference in Budapest this week had 89 patients. There's a good amount of information on the Valkee website http://www.valkee.com/uk/science.html#navigation, as well as a more recent article here http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/11/08/valkees-claimed-bene...

exDM692• 15 years ago

I have said this before in HN, but I'll repeat myself: don't trust this study.

The Valkee company is financially backed by ex-Nokia execs and other people with money and influence in Finland. They have the means to get a small University in Northern Finland to make a study in their favor.

There have been interesting studies about light sensivity in the skin, so why not the brain. However, this study doesn't really prove anything.

Also, don't underestimate the value of placebo in the treatment of mental ailments.

JoeAltmaier• 15 years ago

Right! So even as a $185 placebo, its good medicine?

aes• 15 years ago

Once they add the ability to play music they'll have a killer product in their hands.

tobylane• 15 years ago

Commuters have plenty of artificial light around them. Cyclists and walkers would need this more, but it probably blocks out sound. The whole artificial sun-like light thing does make sense, but mostly as a bedroom light.

Tichy6• 15 years ago

We'll see who has the last laugh, but for now I feel inclined to say "this is the stupidest thing I have ever heard"...

sambeau10• 15 years ago

The flip-side of this is that headphones may be causing depression in some people by blocking light from entering the brain through the ear canal.

Perhaps we should all be taking our earbuds off on sunny days?

jot• 15 years ago

There's a good discussion about these, including responses from the makers here: "Valkee Scam" http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2011/09/valkee-scam/

sambeau10• 15 years ago

I disagree with what this bit:

  The brain isn’t designed to get light in to it. If your
  brain is receiving light; there’s a hole in your head.
  That’s not healthy!

The brain was not designed.

There are a number of holes in your skull and your ears are two of them.

Whether or not the brain reacts to light is either proven or disproven depending on whether you find a flaw in this research or can conduct research that finds against it.

Tichy6• 15 years ago

It just seems very unlikely - that reactivity to light would serve no purpose and hence could be optimized away.

And I think there is something more than "either proven or disproven". If you claim you have an invisible dragon in your garage, it seems very unlikely that you are telling the truth. No need to run experiments for that. (brain and light might be more likely than invisible dragons, just making a point).

kingmanaz• 15 years ago

Years ago I came across an article proposing that the eye first originated as a photosensitive cell in the mass of the brain. At first the cell was binary, it detected light or darkness, and its function had some positive role in the survival of the organism that possessed it. As time passed the cell became specialized and was relocated closer to the skin.

Light penetrates skin, tendon, and bone, albeit in ever smaller amounts. It is not impossible that the brain reacts to light.

jpalomaki• 15 years ago

See for example this: http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/skins-eye-like-receptors... "Skin is able to detect ultraviolet light by using a receptor previously thought to only exist in the eye."

Having light sensitive cells inside your head (in other places than eyes) obviously sounds ridiculous if you believe in intelligent design. However if you think about evolution and how it works, I would say there is pretty good chance all our cells do not have just the functions they absolutely need to have.

Tichy6• 15 years ago

You seem to assume that skin cells don't need to detect ultraviolet light.

zerostar07• 15 years ago

Skin cells are not part of the nervous system, they apparently use rhodopsin just to regulate melanin. You can make any part of the brain photosensitive by injecting Channelrhodopsin viral vectors, that's an exciting recent experimental area called optogenetics.

scarmig• 15 years ago

It's fairly difficult to pinpoint something that humans have that couldn't have been placed there intelligently. Evolution drives organisms, if at all possible, to co-opt anything that develops because of structural constraints. Most of the time it is possible.

This class of traits is something that Steven J Gould named as evolutionary spandrels. So in practice, I would expect the ultraviolet receptors in the skin to have at least one meaningful function. The fact that exposing people to ultraviolet light changes their hormonal balance would tend to suggest this as well. They're definitely doing something.

As a separate argument, a creationist could also provide some information theoretic arguments for why some cells have pointless features. Unnecessary complexity in a biological organism, like in any other computer program, is a dangerous risk. As risk management, we might want to handle that danger by accepting a harmless redundancy and not building an additional subsystem that chaotically interacts with all our other subsystems.

sangfroid• 15 years ago

I haven't read all of the comments here, but I come from a pretty good neuroscience background and have some thoughts on why this looks like baloney. It's about the way the brain works. The brain itself is not a sensory organ. It processes signals from sensory organs. Information reaches the eye or the skin or the tongue as mechanical, chemical, and optical data but then get transduced into an electrical impulse. Even if there were light receptors in the brain, it's highly unlikely that they would be so specific that activating them would cause positive feelings. That's how information gets processed at the level of our senses, but not in our brains. Individual neurons do not hold individual memories. Nor do they seem to control specific emotions.

If shining light on the brain actually changed the levels of activity, it would have an impact on entire neural circuits, not just on this one process. At least, that's how I see it.

Portable sunshine: Earbuds that shine light into your ears

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