Light for well-being: the characteristics of psychophysiological pathway

By Dong Hyun Kim

Supervisors:

Dr. Kevin Mansfield

Mr. Peter Raynham

2013 - 2017

What if the lit environment you are surrounded by calms you down or increases your stress as you go through your day? What if you could control the lighting that is causing these changes to your inner state? People could experience more well-being and become better at understanding their psychophysiological responses of light and lighting. 

Whether like it or not. Rapid developments in LEDs (Light Emitting Diode) and IoT (Internet of Things) seem to indicate that the current lighting profession is facing the new stage in both the real life and the research. Moreover, a great deal of cross-disciplinary research of lighting on human responses has broadened our understanding on both human physiology and psychology. However, it is felt that there are only limited attempts of current research to follow up the rapid changes in the lit environments and it seems necessary to develop a psychophysiological pathway model, which promotes human well-being. 

Therefore, the objectives of the research are to investigate the changes in photometric and colorimetric variables in the current LED environment and analyse both psychological and physiological responses to this environment. Then it ultimately aims to develop a psychophysiological pathway model based on real experiment, which may be used in practice to promote human well-being. 

As a researcher to this study, Dong Hyun Kim is currently a PhD student at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL. He obtained two Bachelor of Science degrees in Life Science and Built Environment from Korea University and UCL. Then he obtained MSc in Light and Lighting in 2012.