While it's no secret that people who live in the Arctic Circle (i.e. in Scandinavian countries like Norway) are more prone to depression and mental distress, mostly due to lack of light and other contributors to seasonal depression, a new piece published in the January/February issue of Popular Science suggests that there is a plus to living in a night-prone country: natural night vision.

According to a study conducted by cognitive neuropsychology specialist Bruno Laeng, the scientist and his team wanted to explore the effect of living primarily in twilight on human vision. Starting back in 2007, Laeng and his crew collected data by measuring "color discrimination" from 250 participants, half of them born above the boundary that delineates the Arctic Circle and half of them from below.

To do this, they presented their test subjects with 85 color tabs and asked them to identify the color. The subjects born above the line were able to correctly arrange the blue-hued tabs, which ran from dark to light, in order, but made mistakes on the green-yellow and green ones — colors that would be more prevalent in brighter areas. 

Another interesting factor? People who lived closer to the equator tended to have a higher frequency of green-red color blindness, indicating a more common occurrence of the latter shade due to the higher rate of the latter.

Via: Popular Science

Photo: Moyan Brenn | Flickr