{"doi":"10.1101/2023.08.09.552691","title":"Differences in the Pupillary Responses to Evening Light between Children and Adolescents","abstract":"ABSTRACT Purpose To assess differences in the pupillary light responses (PLRs) to blue and red evening lights between children and adolescents. Methods Forty healthy participants (8-9 years, n=21; 15-16 years, n=19) completed a PLR assessment 1 h before their habitual bedtime. After a 1 h dim-light adaptation period (<1 lux), baseline pupil diameter was measured in darkness for 30 s, followed by a 10 s exposure to 3.0×10 13 photons/cm 2 /s of either red (627 nm) or blue (459 nm) light, and a 40 s recovery in darkness to assess pupillary re-dilation. Subsequently, participants underwent 7 min of dim-light re-adaptation followed by an exposure to the other light condition. Lights were counterbalanced across participants. Results Across both age groups, maximum pupil constriction was significantly greater (p< 0.001, η p 2 =0.48) and more sustained (p< 0.001, η p 2 =0.41) during exposure to blue compared to red light. For adolescents, the post-illumination pupillary response (PIPR), a hallmark of melanopsin function, was larger after blue compared with red light (p= 0.02, d=0.60). This difference was not observed in children. Across light exposures, children had larger phasic (p< 0.01, η p 2 =0.20) and maximal (p< 0.01, η p 2 =0.22) pupil constrictions compared to adolescents. Conclusions Blue light elicited a greater and more sustained pupillary response than red light across participants. However, the overall amplitude of the rod/cone-driven phasic response was greater in children than in adolescents. Our findings using the PLR highlight a higher sensitivity to evening light in children compared to adolescents, and continued maturation of the human non-visual photoreception/system throughout development.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2023,"id":393531,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9079,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":291619,"name":"Monique K. LeBourgeois","orcid":"0000-0002-7581-5701","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1167600,"name":"Mark T. Durniak","orcid":"0000-0002-5552-2418","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":291955,"name":"Raymond P. Najjar","orcid":"0000-0002-3770-2300","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":325317,"name":"Lauren E. Hartstein","orcid":"0000-0002-3643-8894","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":39,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:19:05.913428Z","pmid":"37645820","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}