I often find it insufferable to encounter a chipper cheery morning person. If you’re anything like me, and the slight majority of the population, then the morning may not be your favourite time of day. The ring of the alarm clock that has invaded sleep in the industrialized world is dreaded by many. We intuitively […]
Archive | Clocks in the Spotlight
Light – not just for sight
Light enables sight. The retina in the back of our eyes contains a fine layer of light-sensitive photoreceptors. There are two types of photoreceptors. The cones allow us to see the color, movement, and fine details of the world around us. The rods, on the other hand, allow us to make out rudimentary shapes at […]
How to cook a biological rhythm: Ingredients of our inner clock
Feedback is everywhere. One can hardly escape a request for feedback nowadays — “Would you like to rate this app, our service, your teacher or the restroom you just used?”. In fact, a similar kind of feedback mechanism also makes our inner biological clocks tick. These inner clocks are responsible for scheduling different aspects of […]
Chronobiology on stage
Scientists not only spend time in their laboratories; sometimes they climb the famous TED(x) stage to tell the world about their discoveries. Fortunately, researchers in the field of biological rhythms are no exception! Watching them talk about the latest research in their field is a great way to spend a lazy afternoon and soak up […]
We’re all sensitive to light at night, but some are much, much more sensitive than others
Humans evolved in an environment with only very bright (sun) or very dim (moon or fire) sources of light. Today, artificial lighting enables us to spend hours per day at intermediate light levels. Our recent study shows that the response of the circadian system (the ‘body clock’) to light across this intermediate range is […]
