Is cognition seasonal?
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п»ї<title>Is cognition seasonal?</title>
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Do you notice mental dullness in the heat? Or, on the contrary, is it the winter that invites you to collect yourself and not think too much? Popular knowledge points directly to the fact that cognition is seasonal or, in other words, that thinking is faster and more efficient in some seasons than in others.
Something similar happens with emotions. Given the number of people whose moods seemed to decline in a seasonal pattern -usually in winter-, a disorder called seasonal depression was even included in the DSM. This manual includes slowing or difficulty in thinking as one of the symptoms of depression.
Experts have tried to unravel this issue in several ways, finding several inconsistencies along the way. Here is a review of the research that has been interested in this question.
Relationship between light and moodLight and dark cycles have an influence on our emotions. The binding of serotonin and melatonin regulates processes such as mood and, in part, cognitive functioning. Thus, in places where sunlight hours are reduced, there appears to be a higher incidence of seasonal depression.
There is also evidence that vitamin D synthesis plays a role in emotional regulation, a process that is also altered in locations with reduced daylight hours.
Based on these biological assumptions, it makes sense to think that cognition is seasonal. However, it is necessary to review the literature, as there is a certain tendency to bias this information in favor of cognitive seasonality, influenced in turn by starting from the perspective of seasonal depressive disorder.
This phenomenon has been studied from many perspectives: places with extreme light-dark cycles -such as Antarctica-, high latitudes or even the incidence of these in public health. Below we summarize the main studies that have addressed this issue.
1. Cognition at the polesSpending a winter in the Arctic is not easy. Polar explorers and scientists must meet a number of requirements, both physical and mental, to perform their tasks adequately. They must live in extreme climatic conditions, with light cycles that involve months of darkness and with a small group of people for long periods of time.
An article published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology assessed the cognitive ability of a group of scientists during their stay in Antarctica through self-report.
Their results support the seasonality of mood in relation to light cycles, but their cognitive performance was not affected by these extreme living conditions.
Cognition is seasonal at high latitudes? Eliminating the factor of reduced socialization that exists on expeditions to the Poles, researchers have also delved into seasonality in populations living at high latitudes.
People living in these places lead an urban life in an environment with extreme light cycles, which makes them a good sample for this topic.
The most significant study in this regard found subtle differences between simple reaction times to stimuli, which gave an advantage to winter. However, they were not significant.
3. Brain imaging studies
In view of these striking but statistically irrelevant results, Meyer and his collaborators studied a group of subjects in the different seasons of the year with functional magnetic resonance imaging. The idea was to find out whether these data were reflected in brain activity.
The tasks were vigilance and complex working memory tasks under controlled conditions, as seasonal signals were eliminated in the laboratory. The results of this research are as follows:
In the vigilance task, brain responses found their peak in the summer.
As for working memory, the highest performance did not vary throughout the year, but the highest brain activation developed in autumn and spring.
4. Public health studiesA search for evidence has also been conducted in large databases, such as mental health institutions. Here, on a large scale, more robust results are found for the idea that cognition is seasonal.
Bridging the differences between the different studies, the general impression is that cognition is more affected by depression than by seasonal cycles. Depressed subjects who had not been exposed to much sunlight had more impaired cognition, but this condition did not appear in healthy people.
Considerations on the idea of whether cognition is seasonalNormally, intuitions or popular knowledge do not usually go astray in their analyses-they are usually quite precise in identifying a phenomenon and less so in pinpointing its causes or the variables that come into play. However, when it comes to mental health and its scientific research, the factors to be taken into account are often many and complexly interrelated.
That is why, in the face of ambiguous results, one should be cautious about making statements such as cognition being seasonal. Nevertheless, science continues to advance, and it is surely only a matter of time before we get answers to this question.
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