Sleep, behavioral rhythms, and neurological disease

Excerpt

Humans are creatures of habit, and behavioral rhythms both consciously and/or unconsciously govern our waking, sleeping, and working lives. Sleep is one of the most commonly studied behavioral rhythms and in animals is governed by a highly conserved genetic transcription-translation network controlled by the genes PER1-3, CRY1-2, BMAL1, and CLOCK. Circadian traits influenced by these genes may, therefore, be heritable, however, the behavioral rhythm of sleep is less well understood in humans and complicated further by the fact that objective assessment, particularly in clinical settings, can be extremely difficult. However, behavioral rhythms are clearly of considerable relevance to aspects of human disease so that disruption of the circadian rhythm of sleep, for example, has been shown to influence disease onset, play a role in the timing and treatment of some neurological disorders, and even influence the time of death. …