Biological Rhythms

12 Key excerpts on "Biological Rhythms"

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  Circadian Rhythm

  Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms

  • Mohamed Ahmed El-Esawi(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • IntechOpen

    (Publisher)

  Biological rhythm is not exclusive to human being. Almost every living organism from plant and microorganism, to animal (in other words from single cell to multicellular) has own circadian rhythm [3]. Biological Rhythms provide adaptation for living organism to environment both inside and outside. Circadian rhythms are the essential component of homeostasis in human body. Biological clocks are responsible to control physi-ological, homeostatic, behavioral and endocrine balance in organism [4]. In a nutshell, the repetitive fluctuations in biological, physiological and biochemical functions of the organisms within the period of 24 h are called circadian rhythms. Biological clock is a physiological system, which has the capacity to measure the passage of time in the living organism. Weger et al. have been shown that how the circadian clock contributes to adult stem cell function especially in the brain and neurogenesis [5]. The main issue is to provide the organism adap-tation for daily and seasonal changes [6]. Biological Rhythms are responsible for secretion of the hormones, the electrical activity of the hearth, body temperature, respiratory motion, and sleep-wakefulness. The main determinative circadian rhythm of the mammalian is sleep and wakefulness cycle [7]. Circadian rhythms, which take those 24 h, are examined in two parts: as nocturnal and diurnal rhythm. Nocturnal rhythm describes changes in the biologi-cal rhythm of the night, and diurnal rhythms refer to the Biological Rhythms that occur dur-ing the day. Human being has a diurnal activity pattern [ 8 ]. The other classification of the circadian rhythms is the infradian and ultradian rhythms. Infradian rhythms are the long rhythms that last more than from 24 h to weeks, months (examples are lunar −29.5 days- and semi lunar −14 days- rhythm. Ultradian rhythms are the short rhythms than 24 h (examples are tidal rhythms −12 h-).

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  The Psychobiology of Human Motivation

  • Hugh Wagner(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3

  Biological Rhythms and sleep

     

  ■ Circadian rhythms

  Jet-lag and shift-work

  ■ Other Biological Rhythms

  ■ Mechanisms of Biological Rhythms

  ■ The nature of sleep

  Electroencephalography Rapid eye-movement sleep Sleep across species Development of sleep

  ■ Sleep deprivation

  ■ Dreaming

  ■ Mechanisms of sleep

  ■ Functions of sleep

  ■ Summary

  ■ Further reading

  L

  IFE is DOMINATED BY a daily drive to fall asleep. Such rhyth-micity is characteristic of animal and even plant activity. While the daily cycle of sleeping and waking is the most obvious rhythm for us, there are others, as we shall see. The importance to psychology of such rhythms is that they involve variations in motivated behaviour, emotional state and cognitive performance. For psychobiology the questions are, for example, what are the origins of these cycles? Are they driven by an internal clock? How are they influenced by external events? What are their implications for daily life? What happens if they go wrong or if we disturb them? Why do we spend about one third of our lives asleep?

  Circadian rhythms

  The daily sleep-waking rhythm is known as a circadian rhythm (meaning ‘about daily’). Humans (and most other primates) are diurnal (meaning active in daylight), while many other animals (e.g. rodents) are nocturnal. The circadian rhythm is most obvious to us as a daily alternation of sleeping and waking. But it is much more than that: underlying the sleep-waking cycle are continuous

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  Stimulus and Response

  The Law of Initial Value

  • Joseph Wilder(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Butterworth-Heinemann

    (Publisher)

  310 CHAPTER VII BIOLOGY A. Biological Rhythms IN the last three decades we have been witnessing in many fields of biological sciences an increasing interest in the phenomena of Biological Rhythms. Congresses of international and interdisciplinary character are taking place; societies are being organized for the study of this problem, foremost among them being the Society for Biological Rhythms in Stockholm. In the course of these events an increasing number of speakers in the conferences of that Society referred to the L.I.V. in the interpretation of their observations in their lectures and publications. Thus the idea began to grow, furthered particularly by Professor Selbach in West Berlin and the able secretary of the aforementioned Society, Dr. Arne SoUberger, in Stock-holm, for a closer co-operation with the International Basimetric Society. This found its expression in three international sjrmposia on Biological Rhythms (Semmering, 1957; Siena, i960; and the symposium of the New York Academy of Sciences, New York, 1961). In these symposia the L.I.V. was made one of the main topics and an entire session in the latter two was devoted to papers dealing with the L.LV. {Basimetry (i960), 3, 5, p. 18, and (1961), 4, p. 44; Conference on Biological Rhythms, Siena, i960, Panminerva Med, (1962); Symposium on Rhythmic Functions in Living Systems, Ann, N,Y. Acad, Sä, (1962), 98, p. 41). To understand this community of interest, a few words should be said about Biological Rhythms. This name describes the fact that most biological values under normal and abnormal conditions do not remain constant but oscillate rhythmically around a middle value. In some biological functions these oscillations are minimal and are measured in milliseconds; in other cases they are measured in hours or larger units, like the best known 24 -hour (or solar) rhythm, lunar rhythms (ebb and tide), monthly (menstruation), quarterly (e.g., seasonal) rhythms; rhythms with periods of several years, etc.

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  Biological Rhythms, Sleep and Hypnosis

  • Simon Green(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  This chapter will be describing many of these rhythms, focusing on why they evolved and how they are controlled. We will concentrate on sleep in particular, partly because it has been the most researched, and 24 Biological Rhythms, Sleep and Hypnosis partly because it is the most fascinating. In humans, sleep has always been a mystery, a period of apparent ‘unconsciousness’ and non-reac-tivity, but including phases of dreaming whose meaning has baffled investigators for centuries and whose relationship to consciousness and awareness is still debated. Apart from the nature of Biological Rhythms and their control mecha-nisms, there are a number of other interesting aspects. As living organ-isms, we have our own set of Biological Rhythms, the most obvious one being our sleep–waking cycle. However, unlike animals, we do not always let them guide our behaviour, for example trying to work when we should be asleep. What are the consequences of trying to go against these biolog-ical drives? In this chapter, we will cover: ■ Free-running Biological Rhythms ■ Different types of Biological Rhythms ■ Endogenous pacemakers ■ Disrupting Biological Rhythms We noted above some examples of the wide range of Biological Rhythms found in the living world. Why should they exist at all? Plants and animals live in particular environments. Animals may be day or night living – diurnal or nocturnal – while plants occupy a range of habitats across the globe. However, wherever they live, plants and animals are subject to regular changes in their environments. The most obvious one is the alternation of day and night over each 24-hour day. Additionally, there are the different seasons – spring, summer, autumn, winter in temperate zones such as Europe and the USA. Each season is associated with changes in temperature and day length, both of which can affect plants and animals.

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  Hormonally Induced Changes to the Mind and Brain

  • Bozzano G Luisa(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  To date, however, the ability of hormones to alter or disturb Biological Rhythms remains, with the exception of melatonin, relatively unstudied. We hope that this chapter provides an incentive to change that situation. Our objective in this chapter is to provide a biopsychological perspective on the interrelations of Biological Rhythms, hormones, behavior, and psychopathol-ogy. We believe that evolutionary, physiological, and psychological processes must be understood in relation to each other if they are to be understood at all, and that the causal interactions across these domains are at least as important as the more commonly studied causal processes that occur within each of them. Thus, after an introductory description of Biological Rhythms, we discuss the evolu-tionary selection pressures that give rise to endogenous oscillators for daily and seasonal rhythms. We then examine the structural properties and physiological mechanisms of these biological clocks. Next, we review the relationships between 290 Donald L. McEachron and Jonathan Schull Biological Rhythms and several endocrine systems and secretions—pineal mela-tonin, the adrenal hormone corticosterone, gonadal steroids, and the thyroid hor-mones (see Figure 1). Several major themes will emerge, which we will preview here. One theme concerns the evolution of vertebrate biological rhythm systems. Although the pineal gland in many nonmammalian vertebrates tranduces en-vironmental light-dark cycles and serves as a biological clock, the pineal's role in mammals has been almost completely subordinated to circuitry that goes from retina to hypothalamus to suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and thence to the pineal and elsewhere. In mammals and humans, the SCN appears to be a primary circadian pacemaker and the pineal's residual role is to modulate the SCN, and possibly to couple and uncouple secondary circadian rhythms from the SCN-controlled circadian cycles.

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  Chronobioengineering

  Introduction to Biological Rhythms with Applications, Volume 1

  • Donald McEachron(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Springer

    (Publisher)

  However, even this brief discussion suggests that the effects are far greater than evident at first glance. Thus, we now turn our attention to reasons behind the evolution of Biological Rhythms in the hope of uncovering the roles played by oscillations. Once this is understood, the door is opened for developing practical methods of effective intervention because, after all, a stitch in time saves nine or perhaps, many, many more. 1.4. WHY Biological Rhythms? 7 1.4 WHY Biological Rhythms? Cardiac rhythms represent the tip of an extraordinarily large iceberg. Almost every biological system or subsystem either cycles naturally or can be induced to cycle under the proper conditions. From neural activity in the brain [6] to metabolic processes, such as glycolysis [10,22] and the activity of mitochondria [1,2,7] , from the release of endocrine signals [13] to rhythms in body temperature [18] and even suicide attempts [4] , living systems march to a bewildering variety of different beats. The range of frequencies is extraordinary, reflecting the multitude of systems which generate rhythms and the number of potential functions to which these cycles might be put. These frequencies include the short millisecond neural and metabolic rhythms [6,22] , minute long cycles in mitochondrial activity [7] , pulsatile hormone secretion with frequencies of 45–120 minutes [9,15,16,21] , daily rhythms in almost every physiological and behavioral parameter [13,18,19] and beyond to multi-day sexual cycles, annual reproductive rhythms and even multi-year ecological rhythms [3,4,12,19] . Why so many biological cycles? Three arguments supporting the evolution of Biological Rhythms will initially be presented, two of which rely on basic engineering principles and the third on environmental adaptation. This is not an attempt to fuse the idea of Intelligent Design, a basically religious concept, with the scientific hypotheses of evolution by natural selection.

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  Galileo’s Pendulum

  From the Rhythm of Time to the Making of Matter

  • Roger G. Newton, Roger G. NEWTON(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  In some instances the unrecognized existence of these circadian rhythms has interfered with experiments set up to measure psychological stimulus-response reactions that would not be expected to vary with time. What is more, be-cause the endogenous rhythm differs somewhat from 24 7 biological timekeeping hours, the interference was not always easy to detect: even repeating an experiment at the same time every day did not necessarily eliminate a systematic error introduced by varia-tions in a subject’s reaction depending on the time of day when the test was performed. When more than one rhythm is at work—the external diurnal and the slightly different circadian—the result can be quite confusing. The autonomy of biological clocks is now a well-estab-lished fact. In a person isolated from environmental cues, the human circadian system proceeds at a fairly uniform speed that is longer than the 24-hour day. In a person who is not isolated, it is kept synchronous with the cycle of the sun through constant entraining in response to environ-mental variations—mostly variations in light intensity. In other words, though running at a steady rate, our internal clock is slow by about an hour per day, but since it is con-tinually automatically reset by cycles of light and dark, un-der normal circumstances the loss of time is not cumula-tive; our internal clock is thus entrained with the rhythm of the sun. Humans, of course, are only one species, and the circa-dian is only one of the Biological Rhythms. In addition to the heart beat, some internal timekeepers have shorter peri-ods—they are called ultradian —such as the 0.1 second pe-riod of the electric activity of the brain measured in an elec-troencephalogram (EEG). Still others are longer, such as the 28-day menstrual cycle of women and the circannual time-keepers regulating hibernation in bears; possibly some in-ternal clocks have much longer periods. Rhythmic behavior appears to be a property of most biological systems.

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  Biological Oscillators: Their Mathematical Analysis

  • Theodosios Pavlidis(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Third, the biological mechanism responsible for the rhythms remains a mystery. Not only that, but it seems to be insensitive to most chemical agents. Finally, the long time scale involved allows the performance of experiments which 2 9 30 2 EXAMPLES OF Biological Rhythms study in detail various dynamical properties of the rhythms. High-frequency oscillations (e.g., of the electrical activity in cardiac muscle tissue) are not as easily subject to detailed manipulation. We cover briefly additional types of oscillators and, in particular, those involving enzymatic reactions. 2.2 Circadian Rhythms The work of many researchers, especially during this century, has resulted in an impressive accumulation of experimental evidence which strongly suggests the existence of endogenous oscillators in living systems. In particular it seems that daily cycles of biological phenomena are controlled by such oscillators rather than by the alternation of light and darkness in their environment. One argument in favor of this theory is that organisms kept in carefully controlled environments, where the temperature and light intensity were kept constant, still exhibit a periodicity in their behavior. The period of such rhythms is almost always different than 24 hours—in general, varying between 22 and 26 hours. Usually, but not always, for a given individual organism the value of the period remains unchanged with the passage of time. Figure 2.2.1 shows a typical way of plotting experimental data of this kind. Each line represents 24 hours, Day 0 1.2 24 1 2 Ä 3 θ' 4 C' 5 : 6 F I G . 2 . 2 . 1 . A typical way of presenting data illustrating periodic activity of an organism. 2.2 CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS 31 with the data for each day plotted in succession. The heavy lines represent intervals of active behavior and the thin lines intervals of inactive behavior. It can be seen that the active phase starts (and ends) every 26 hours.

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  Physiological Psychology

  • Thomas Brown(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  During the period of adaptation, the most important factor which produces changes in physiological systems and in behavioral performance is probably the desynchronization of the physiological systems. Another kind of circadian rhythm disruption which may have deleterious effects is constant lighting conditions. Although an animal 's internal biological clock or clocks will begin to free-run, recent studies suggest that thermoregulation may be deleteriously affected, and the organism's reproductive system may also be changed in subtle ways. Circadian rhythm disruptions may also be partly responsible for the rapid mood swings of manic-depressive patients. Some of these patients show abnormal circadian rhythms, and it is possible that their shifts from one extreme mood to another may be occurring when their own free-running Biological Rhythms are most out of phase with the 24-hour light/dark cycle. Although the research on circadian rhythms is only beginning, it is becoming clear that it will yield some very important contributions to our understanding of the physiological bases of behavior. As we study eating behavior, thermoregulation, emotional behavior, or the effects of drugs, we must now take into account possible circadian rhythm effects, because they are likely to interact with all of these other behavioral systems. Human beings spend about one-third of each circadian cycle in sleep, sleep so sleep constitutes an important part of the circadian rhythms. De-spite the fact that we spend so much time sleeping, research on sleep (its functions, its causes, even its description) has not been terrribly vigorous until recently. There are still many unanswered questions about sleep. In this section we will first explore the nature of sleep. Electroen-cephalograms have played a particularly important role in establish-ing the characteristics of this period in our lives, and we will see that sleep has its own rhythms which are easily observed in the EEG. Next sleep 383

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  The Behavior of Animals

  Mechanisms, Function, and Evolution

  • Johan J. Bolhuis, Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Jerry A. Hogan, Johan J. Bolhuis, Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Jerry A. Hogan(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Rhythm Parameters and Terminology Chronobiologists use a specialized terminology as convenient shorthand for communicating with each other. The terms or their usage are, however, often unfamiliar to nonspecialists, so it is worthwhile to explicitly define a few important terms in any introduction to this field. A rhythm may be formally defined as any process that repeats itself at regular intervals. A device that produces a rhythm is an oscillator . If more than one oscillator is involved in regulation of a rhythm, the one that ultimately sets the rhythm’s long-term periodicity is the pacemaker for that rhythm. An oscillator can be used in several different ways. By counting cycles or portions of an oscillator’s cycle, a measure of duration or elapsed time can be ob-tained, and events can be triggered at specified intervals. By synchronizing an oscillator to an external cycle (e.g., the solar day), it can then be consulted as a clock to recognize local time (e.g., any arbitrary time of day). The latter is a critical timekeeping function, since only a few times of day are sharply marked in the environment (e.g., dusk and dawn), but behavioral or physiological processes might be profitably linked to any number of other times. Circadian rhythms of behavior and physiology, whether they are continuously vari-able (e.g., body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate) or discrete events (e.g., onset of locomotor activity, mealtime, sleep onset) can be conceptualized as hands of the circa-dian clock. By monitoring these observable hands, we can identify the position ( phase , or instantaneous state) of the clock within its cycle (Figure 4.2). These processes are distinct from the underlying clock mechanism (metaphorically, the gears of the clock), which may not be directly observable.

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  Essential Animal Behavior

  • Graham Scott(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  In Chapter 2 we discussed the way in which the nervous system exerts a level of control over the behavior of an organism. We saw that one class of behaviors, the reflexes, could be thought of, quite literally, as a knee-jerk response to a stimulus. However, we also noted that the control of some behaviors was far more com-plex than this and that their performance may depend upon a range of factors both internal and external to the organism con-cerned. In this chapter we will explore this further by considering the factors that motivate an individual to perform a particular behavior at a particular time. Contents Motivation Homeostasis Hyperphagia Biological Rhythms Circadian rhythms Infradian rhythms Ultradian rhythms Entrainent Zeitgeber The suprachiasmatic nuclei Summary Questions for discussion Further reading The Motivation and Organization of Behavior Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happen-ing at once. Woody Allen Key points u Behaviors can be thought of as having underlying motivations. These may be internal or external to the individual (or both). Levels of motivation relating to homeostasis are regulated in accordance to need by a range of physiological mechanisms. Variations in motivation tend to increase fitness (see “Focus on fitness and coefficients of relatedness” in Chapter 4). u Many behaviors are expressed according to a distinct temporal pattern. They occur with a regular periodicity and are controlled by biological clocks. u There is a genetic component to the control of Biological Rhythms, but their cycling is also controlled to some extent by internal and external environ-mental cues. Motivation and Organization of Behavior 43 Motivation Homeostasis and the motivation to drink Imagine the following situation. You are standing on a sandy beach on a very hot day. Being an athletic type you have just played a particularly gruelling game of beach volleyball.

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  Theoretical Approaches in Psychology

  • Matt Jarvis(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Lesions are produced in the animal when under anaesthetic by drilling a hole in the skull and using an electric current to burn away a small area of brain. The animal is then carefully observed to see whether any aspects of its behaviour have changed. An early lesioning study was carried out by Hetherington and Ranson (1942). They produced a lesion in part of the hypothalamus of a rat and observed that the rat ate uncontrollably, trebling its normal body weight. This type of study has been invaluable in understanding the role of the hypothalamus in eating behaviour.

  Bodily rhythms and sleep

  ‘We live in a rhythmic world. Night follows day, the seasons on Earth and the stars above follow their annual patterns, lawn daisies close at night and open at daylight, pubs open and close!’ (Bentley, 1999 in this series, p. 11). Human and animal behaviour follow a number of cycles or rhythms. These rhythms are classified according to their time-scale. Circadian rhythms are those that last about a day, ultradian rhythms are those that last less than a day, and infradian rhythms are those which last more than a day. One infradian rhythm in humans is the menstrual cycle, which lasts approximately 28 days. There are numerous ultradian rhythms. One example is cognitive vigilance, which cycles at about an hour and a half, and affects performance on mental tasks. What this means is our cognitive abilities peak and fall off again approximately every 90 minutes.

  An example of a circadian rhythm is the sleep-wake cycle. We all know from experience that most of us need to sleep between six and nine hours per night, but that some people need more sleep than others. Margaret Thatcher reportedly needed only a couple of hours sleep a night while she was prime minister. Some less fortunate people need more than the usual six to nine hours. Unfortunately employers are under no legal obligation to let you start work later in the morning if you fall into this category!

  It seems that the regulation of the sleep-wake cycle is dependent on both internal and external factors. Within the brain we have at least one bodyclock which helps regulate our circadian rhythm. We believe that one bodyclock is situated in a region called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (or SCN). This is near the top of the brain, just where the optic nerves cross. The SCN is shown in Figure 9.3

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