Sleep, everyone needs it and some of us don't get enough of it. And yet our body is very determined to let us know when we should be doing it even when there isn't any indication of time of day. I've never wondered how a person who has an inability to see knows when to wake up or go to sleep. In some cases a person would using a different need to set a circadian rhythm meaning that they'll use meals, noise, or temperature to tell them when to wake up and go to sleep. In other cases however when a person is not sensitive to meal times, or other time indicators they will have a day longer than twenty four hours causing insomnia and sleepiness. There is another mechanism by which some people who are blind can tell when to go to sleep. The suprachiasmatic nucleus or SCN which has its own little system on responding to an overall average of light rather than an instant reaction to when light becomes apparent or ceases.
People who are blind can actually sync their sleeping and waking pattern to a local pattern of sunlight, and interestingly enough the SCN can also aggravate a migraine in a person who is blind because of the light. Meaning that even without being able to see people can still have light sensitive excitation. Its interesting to learn that even when our body feels inhibited there are mechanisms that are still at work to compensate for what we feel we no longer have.
That is really cool, do blind people also use other forms of the circadian rhythm to synch their sleeping time as much as light or more since they are blind, like temperatures and what not, because even though they can’t see light they still use it to adjust their sleeping cycle with the SCN, so maybe those other forms are stronger than light since they can’t see it.
Is it possible that blind people may use another sense as a form of cicardian rhythm? I guess it is similar to brain plasticity, when a part is damaged other parts take over the roles of that part of the brain.
That is really cool, do blind people also use other forms of the circadian rhythm to synch their sleeping time as much as light or more since they are blind, like temperatures and what not, because even though they can’t see light they still use it to adjust their sleeping cycle with the SCN, so maybe those other forms are stronger than light since they can’t see it.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible that blind people may use another sense as a form of cicardian rhythm? I guess it is similar to brain plasticity, when a part is damaged other parts take over the roles of that part of the brain.
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