Ultradian Rhythms in Life Processes

Ultradian rhythms play an essential part at all levels of biological organization, providing timekeeping for intracellular processes, playing various roles in intracellular signaling systems, and underpinning coherent behavior in tissues and organs. They are crucial to endocrine and neural performance and in psychobiology. This book brings together the evidence for these findings. In lower eukaryotes short-period rhythms (period 30-70 min) are coupled to an ultradian clock which serves as a central timekeeper. In metazoans, similar rhythms are necessary for enter cell communication, and temporal coupling for the coordination of integrated functions of tissues and organs to provide ‘homeodynamics’ of the whole organism. Electrical endocrine and behavioral rhythms characterize both wakefulness and sleep, pathology disordered states give rise to dynamic diseases. A continuum can now be traced from the molecular genetic, through the cellular and neuroendocrine to the behavioral and psychosocial levels. Many of the results presented in this book are recent and novel, and have far reaching consequences for our understanding of health and disease.