One of these studies showed that productivity in the workplace is highest when the air temperature is about 72 degrees, and productivity starts to drop off in the mid-70s. Other studies have found an effect from heat on office workers and on standardized test score performance, says Caleb Dresser, an emergency medicine physician who also serves as the director of health care solutions at the Harvard Chan Center for Climate, Health and Global Environment. Plus oxygen saturation levels in the blood were lower at the elevated temperatures as well, which the researchers said could be expected to result in reduced cognitive performance. Researchers found that as the temperature rose, activity in the parasympathetic nervous system, the anti-stress system that can help us stay calm and relaxed, was lowered. But there's a body of evidence suggesting it may be something about the heat itself that interferes with cognition.Ī similar study published in 2021 also documented a dip in cognitive performance at air temps of 79 degrees. It can be hard to get a good night's rest if you're not accustomed to the heat, and a lack of sleep could certainly impair reaction time and focus. Part of this effect may be explained by interrupted sleep. " We saw reductions in the order of 10% in their response times and also their accuracy." "The magnitude of the effect was really striking," Cedeño Laurent says. It's easy to get tripped up if your attention or reaction time is slowed, he says, and that's exactly what heat appears to be doing. "So, if I show the word 'red' in the color blue, participants have to respond 'blue'," says study author Jose Guillermo Cedeño Laurent, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health. The tests included a math test requiring simple addiction and subtraction and a second test, the Stroop test, that jumbles colors and words. The people who slept in the hotter dorm rooms performed measurably worse on the tests. But others slept in rooms without air-conditioning, where the temperature hovered around 80 degrees.Įach morning for nearly two weeks the students took a few tests, administered on their cell phones. Some had central AC, and slept at a cool 71 degrees Fahrenheit. Several summers back, researchers in Boston studied young adults living in college dorm rooms during a heat wave. If you're feeling a bit brain-fogged these days, you might not be wrong to blame it on the heat.
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