How The Body Regulates Its Internal Clock

In this column, analyze the significance of your quotations. Allow the following questions to guide your responses: Why is this important? What does this reveal? Why does the author say it this way? What is the tone/mood of this passage?

Biological research for sleep pressure began more than a century ago, and there was a fluid found in the brains of the test subjects, the hypotoxin would reveal why subjects would grow drowsy. Come the 20th century, researchers began to tape electrodes to the heads of human subjects. Using the EEGs, the researchers found out that the brain has a clear routine during the night’s sleep. About 35-40 minutes into the sleep, the metabolism has slowed down and the breathing is even. Meaning now the sleeper is no longer easy to wake. “After a certain amount of time has passed, the brain flips a switch and the waves tend to grow small and tight again” (Greenwood). When this happens, it is called rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, which is our dreaming period. The more sleep- deprived that the subject is, the bigger the waves during slow wave sleep, which is before REM sleep. The search for the hypotoxin was not unsuccessful, however, there are a handful of substances that clearly demonstrated to cause sleep. Including a molecule called

Circadian rhythms occur every 24 hours; an example of a circadian rhythm is the sleep-waking cycle. We are diurnal animals who are active during the daytime and asleep at night, other animals are nocturnal they are active at night but asleep during the day. The circadian rhythm depends on the interaction of physiological and psychological processes to be tuned into the sleep-waking cycle so energy is provided when needed. As diurnal humans we have a fairly stable sleep pattern with the time we go to sleep and the time we wake up, this consistency suggests an internal mechanism controls sleep, endogenous pacemaker. However, this can be overridden by external factors, exogenous zeitgebers.

Humans have a natural rhythm of 25 hours of sleep and wakefulness, in order to reset this the brain plays an important role with the suprachiasmatic nucleus which is a cluster of neurons in the medial hypothalamus of the brain. The SCN

This was a very interesting assignment; I have learned some important things on this topic. The topics are on circadian rhythms disorders and sleep deprivation. To start out on circadian rhythms disorders this is what I have learned. Circadian rhythms are regulated by a part of the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. One’s alertness, core body temperature, moods, learning efficiency, blood pressure, metabolism, and pulse rate all follow these circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms lead to sleep deprivation. Circadian rhythms affect one’s body not allowing one to get the correct sleep and time of sleep one is need to function properly.

The human body has a plethora of rhythms that regulate activity such as behavioral processes, physiological functions, moods, and performance. Sleep is a major action that falls into this category of

The in-depth quality of the “Sleep-Wake” paper may be linked to the qualifications of its authors. All three sources were written by some level of expert within the field. Keith J. Anderson, the writer of the article “College Students try to Cheat Sleep Needs” for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has a Ph D., yet is only a counselor for Gallagher Health Center. The four authors of the Biological Rhythm Research study are all very highly specialized in this area. As workers and researchers for the Physiology Department for the Chronobiological Laboratory in Natal, Brazil, they deal with the intricacies of sleep and its effects on the human body daily. The people who wrote the “Sleep-Wake” pattern are also very well educated and conditioned to address the topic of sleep and its effect on college students. Two of these authors are professors with the Department of the Sciences of Education at an international university, while the third author works directly with the Sleep Disorders Unit inside of the

In contrast to the previously presented evidence that sleep involves a global neuronal network and is controlled by global homeostatic systems, the main findings of this study present results that show SWA being induced in select areas of the cerebral cortex, which suggests that sleep coordination may consist of local regulation, indicating that sleep may have an effect as specific as the cellular level. Moreover, their results demonstrated that improved performance tasks after sleep can be strongly attributed to local SWA homeostasis (Figure 2), which supports the notion that SWA may play a highly influential role in synaptic consolidation and synaptic downscaling in wake-active neuronal connections (Huber et al.,

Circadian rhythm refers to the twenty-four-hour cycle that results in physical, mental and behavioral changes in living things. Animals and plants respond differently to the lightness and darkness depending on the circadian rhythm or the internal biological clock. The body clock works responsibly in making sure that the pattern of mental alertness of a person is enhanced. A DNA molecule is transmitted to pass the message for opening up of the RNA, and the mRNA is transformed into a protein which takes some time for the DNA to be turned into a molecule. The time of conversion is determined and kept by the body’s biological clock (Alice, 2012). If the clock fails to work the level of alertness can be affected, and this can make a person to cause traffic accidents or even cause injuries at the place of work. Also, some people can suffer from chronic diseases if the biological clock is altered with.

One of the question that will be answer in my essay is why we sleep? Is it because of an ancient survival instinct we have? It very well could be however another explanation for why we sleep is based on the belief that sleep is for our bodies to restore what we lost in the body while we were awake. It is thought to provide the body with the rest it needs in order to repair itself. We have been able to gather information about sleep due to human and animal study and research alike. One of the things we have learned from animal research is that the animals who are deprived of sleep start to have their immune system deteriorate. We can support this claim because of the findings of the hormones that are released. One of the other positive aspects of sleep is that when we

It is no secret that, similar to other animals, sleep is one of the most important things for a human being’s overall health. According to Watson and Breedlove, there are four main biological/neurological functions of sleep: energy conservation—the body uses less energy when it is asleep through what is called slow-wave sleep (SWS) by doing things such as reducing body temperature and slowing respiration; niche adaptation—the environmental happenings to which organisms are adapted to; body restoration—it restores materials used during awake hours; and memory consolidation—SWS and REM sleep help the brain consolidate memories from the previous day (2012).

The Circadian Timing System (CTS) is responsible for generation and synchronization of endogenous oscillations expressed by living beings, for most physiologic functions and behaviors, with period around 24 hours (for review see Dibner et al., 2010). Among the central structures of rodent circadian clock are hypothalamic Suprachiasmatic Nuclei (SCN) and Intergeniculate Leaflet (IGL) in lateral geniculate complex of thalamus. The former is considered the master pacemaker of circadian rhythms, regulating cyclic patterns of physiologic and hormonal activity in response to environmental cues, via a variety of outputs. The latter projects to SCN, via geniculo-hypothalamic tract (GHT), having an important modulatory role in circadian rhythm synchronization

The average human spends about 25 years of their life sleeping. That is equal to one-third of a person’s life. So if sleep is vital and common among every single human, what do you know about it? What happens when we sleep (Attention Grabber)? Before the 1950s, scientists believed that the brain would just “shut off” when we would go to sleep. It wasn’t until the discovery of the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) state that scientists really looked into what happens in the brain while we are asleep. Studies have found that we go through a cycle of stages during sleep, and it is important for our health (Orientation to Topic). Today, I am going to inform you about what really happens when we sleep, and some issues that are found among it (Specific Purpose). In order to really understand this worldwide commonality, you need to know some background on sleep, the stages in the cycle, and some common disorders (Central Idea). I have taken a year long psychology course that went into depth on sleep psychology, and I have done extensive research on the topic to better grasp it (Statement of Credibility). I want to inform you on sleep so you can understand what happens when you close your eyes every night, and so you can detect any irregularities in your sleep pattern (Statement of Goodwill). First, I will give a background of why and how we know to sleep, then I will explain the stages in the sleep cycle, and finally I will tell you about some common disorders (Preview).

“Why do we sleep?” is a very popular questions that many humans ask today. Sleep is very sufficient to the human body. If it was not important, then God would not have designed for a third of our life to be occupied by sleep. During this time period, many people are interested to know what is a good amount of sleep and what are the harmful effects to not getting enough sleep.

The seminar that I attended was hosted by the biology department, with was Jennifer Hurley presenting from the Renesslaer Polytechnic Institute. The topic of the seminar was Circadian Biology: The complexities of keeping time. In this seminar, she went into depth about circadian rhythms and why they are important. Jennifer has done many experiments in regards circadian rhythms to learn more about them. One experiment she conducted consisted of the plant Daphnia. Jennifer and her research team discovered that the Daphnia has a molecular circadian rhythm. This illustrated that humans are not the only one with a molecular clock, but humans have the most advanced circadian clock currently known. Circadian rhythms are only one biological rhythm that the body undergoes. Some examples consist of ultradian rhythms which take less than 24 hours to complete, infrardian rhythms that take more than 24 hours to complete and then there’s circadian rhythms which is done at an estimation of 24 hours. Circadian rhythms are our biological way of keeping track of time. It was defined in the presentation as a daily repeating process with a period of 24 hours. There are certain criteria that are needed to establish what a rhythm is. Rhythms persist in the absence of external cues. In essence, this means that because of these rhythms, people are able to anticipate certain events that can occur. Rhythms must be trainable and resettable by exposure to external stimuli which comprises of light,