Chronobiology

Emotional intelligence (EI) and morningness-eveningness (M-E) preference have been shown to influence mood states. The present article investigates the way in which these two constructs may interact, influencing morning and evening mood levels. A sample of 172 participants completed a multidimensional mood scale measuring energetic arousal (EA), tense arousal (TA), and hedonic tone at 7:00 and at 22:00. As expected, morning and evening types experienced higher EA at their preferred time of day; effects of M-E on other mood dimensions were weaker. EI was found to correlate with lower TA, but the association was stronger at 22:00, perhaps reflecting the role of EI in managing the social events characteristic for the evening hours. An interactive effect of EI and M-E was found for both diurnal changes and morning levels of EA. Namely, in individuals higher in EI, there appeared a more marked synchrony effect between chronotype and EA, which was absent in those low in EI; individuals higher in EI showed more pronounced diurnal changes in EA characteristic for their chronotype (i.e., higher EA at morning hours in morning chronotypes; higher EA at evening hours in evening chronotypes), while in participants low in EI, diurnal changes in EA were smaller. Moreover, the characteristic positive association between morningness and EA during morning hours was apparent only in those high in EI. These findings suggest that individual differences in circadian variation in mood reflect several factors, including an endogenous rhythm in energy, the distribution of social activities throughout the day, and the person's awareness of their own energy level.

Objectives. The Diagnostic Interview for Atypical Depression (DIAD; Terman et al., 1998) is a structured interview for identifying the symptoms of atypical depression with more specificity than the cursory questioning of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID; First et al., 1995). Additionally, it refines an earlier semi-structured interview guide (Stewart et al., 1993) by applying uniform categorical ratings and focusing on the patient's actual life events rather than hypothetical scenarios. Symptoms are described to the patient without implying value judgments (e.g., that people are expected to maintain romantic relationships), in an attempt to minimize biased responses. The present study ascertained inter-rater reliability of the DIAD in two distinct clinical populations—patients with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and nonseasonal major depressive disorder (MDD). We compared diagnostic ratings and symptom frequency to establish whether the time...

Aim. – The aim of this study was to examine the reliability of the Spanish version of Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM) and its ability to measure the circadian typology.Subjects and methods. – Voluntary and unpaid psychology students (N= 391; 132 men and 259 women), aged between 17 and 33, completed the questionnaire between the months of September and December.Results.

Fisetin, a bioactive flavonoid, found in many fruits, was administered orally (50 mg/kg body
weight) to hyperammonemic rats (treated with ammonium chloride (AC) for 8 weeks (i.p.
injections, 100 mg/kg body weight). Treatment with AC augmented oxidative stress, levels
of ammonia, enzymes (alanine and aspartate transaminases and alkaline phosphatase) in
blood, glutamate and glutamine content in brain, caused disturbances in the circadian locomotor
rhythm with a reduction in amplitude and period and downregulated the expression
of soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) in brain. Cotreatment
of fisetin treatment with AC, prevented the AC-induced elevation in oxidative stress,
normalized the levels of ammonia, transaminases and alkaline phosphatase in circulation,
glutamate and glutamine in brain, upregulated the expression of sGC and GFAP and
stabilized the circadian locomotor rhythm.Thus, fisetin assuages AC induced effects through
its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, cytoprotective, neuroprotective and neurotrophic properties.

Recently, seven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of ARNTL, TIM and PER3 genes were found associated with affective temperaments in bipolar disorder patients. This study aimed to test whether a) the same associations appear in a non-clinical sample; b) the SNPs are related to other affective dimensions; c) the SNPs underpin the associations between chronotype and affective temperaments/dimensions. Three hundred thirty-eight university students completed the Temperament Scale of Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego Auto-questionnaire, the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale, the General Health Questionnaire, the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire and the Composite Scale of Morningness. Seven SNPs of the ARNTL, TIM and PER3 genes were genotyped. According to nominal significance ARNTL rs7107287 was associated with a cyclothymic temperament, depressive and stress symptoms, general mental health and perceived negative impact of seasonality, while TIM rs10876890 was associated with a hyperthymic temperament and the TIM rs2291738 was associated with chronotype. Different SNPs were related to chronotype and affective temperaments/dimensions and therefore they seem to not underpin relationships between chronotype and affective dysfunction, i.e. in the present study eveningness was related to dysthymic, cyclothymic and irritable temperaments, more symptoms of depression, stress, worse mental health and a negative impact of seasonality, while morningness was related to hyperthymic temperament. The SNPs associations need further replication given that they did not achieve Bonferroni criteria of significance accounting for the number of polymorphisms considered and tests conducted.

Do you want to become a Super Navigator? Life Navigation is four concrete tools about time, goals, energy and spaces – each of which can provide a significant boost to your productivity and life quality.

In a knowledge society it’s not about how many hours you are working. It is about working when you are most productive. Life Navigation is creating a flexible work culture and first step in the cultural change is to set people free from 9-5 and that work is something that only can take place at the office. Work is not a place – it’s an ongoing activity. Second, focus more on results and less on visibility. Third, give people the tools to improve their individual Work-Life Balance.

Background: The study aimed to elucidate previously observed associations between morningness-eveningness and depressive symptomatology in university students. Relations between components of depressive symptomatology and morningness-eveningness were analysed.
Methods: Nine hundred and seventy-four university students completed Polish versions of the Centre for Epidemiological Studies – Depression scale (CES-D; Polish translation appended to this paper) and the Composite Scale of Morningness. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to test the structure of depressive symptoms. Pearson and partial correlations (with age and sex controlled), along with regression analyses with morning affect (MA) and circadian preference as predictors, were used.
Results: PCA revealed three components of depressive symptoms: depressed/somatic affect, positive affect, interpersonal relations. Greater MA was related to less depressive symptoms in three components. Morning circadian preference was related to less depressive symptoms in depressed/somatic and positive affects and unrelated to interpersonal relations. Both morningness-eveningness components exhibited stronger links with depressed/somatic and positive affects than with interpersonal relations. Three CES-D components exhibited stronger links with MA than with circadian preference. In regression analyses only MA was statistically significant for positive affect and better interpersonal relations, whereas more depressed/somatic affect was predicted by lower MA and morning circadian preference (relationship reversed compared to correlations).
Limitations: Self-report assessment.
Conclusions: There are three groups of depressive symptoms in Polish university students. Associations of MA with depressed/somatic and positive affects are primarily responsible for the observed links between morningness-eveningness and depressive symptoms in university students. People with evening circadian preference whose MA is not lowered have less depressed/somatic affect.

Objective: Several different measures of heart rate variability, and particularly of respiratory sinus arrhythmia, are widely used in research and clinical applications. For many purposes it is important to know which features of heart rate variability are directly related to respiration and which are caused by other aspects of cardiac dynamics.
Approach: Inspired by ideas from the theory of coupled oscillators, we use simultaneous measurements of respiratory and cardiac activity to perform a nonlinear disentanglement of the heart rate variability into the respiratory-related component and the rest.
Main results: The theoretical consideration is illustrated by the analysis of 25 data sets from healthy subjects. In all cases we show how the disentanglement is manifested in the different measures of heart rate variability.
Significance: The suggested technique can be exploited as a universal preprocessing tool, both for the analysis of respiratory influence on the heart rate and in cases when effects of other factors on the heart rate variability are in focus.

If there were geese anywhere in the universe besides earth, we should probably expect to find them in the constellation Vulpecula. Vulpecula the Fox was contrived by Johannes Hevelius, the famous Polish astronomer who was based in Gdansk in the seventeenth century. Hevelius originally named this constellation Vulpecula & Anser, or the Fox & Goose. It’s no longer possible, however, to take a gander at the Goose. The Goose is long gone, ingested by the Fox in whose jaws Hevelius mapped its neck. Vulpecula is located right next to Cygnus the Swan, and for this 2005 Boeing Science Writing Contest article, Bernie Taylor has allowed those extraterrestrial geese to migrate to an imagined planet in the Swan, Cygnus 3. Bernie Taylor is a quantitatively-minded naturalist living in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. His 2004 book, Biological Time, examines the rhythms that regulate the lives of animals and plants and documents as well as ancient and indigenous knowledge of these natural cycles.
Some of these biological rhythms are modulated by celestial phenomena, and so Mr. Taylor asks whether different astronomical circumstances would alter the behavior of geese on another world or even eliminate the possibility of their existence. His imaginary planet in some ways parallels the earth. It is the third planet from its sun, a solar-like star in Cygnus. Notwithstanding the similarity of Cygnus 3 to earth, looking for geese on that planet could be a wild-goose chase.
The ancients imagined the constellation Cygnus as a swan in flight, headed south. They linked its seasonal departure from the night sky to the autumn migration of water fowl. Our failure to find any geese on Cygnus 3 wouldn't necessarily mean they don’t exist. They could, after all, have just gone south on us. What’s good for the Goose is sauce for the Swan. —E.C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory

The present study aimed at testing psychometric properties of the Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM) and validating it with mid sleep on free days (MSF) derived from the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire (MCTQ) in Poland, along with analyzing age and sex differences in the CSM and MSF. A sample of 952 Polish residents (62.6% females) aged between 13 and 46 was tested. Additionally, a sample of 33 university students were given MCTQ and filled in a sleep diary for 8 days. MSF derived from MCTQ was related to the one from sleep diary (r = .44). The study revealed good reliability of the CSM (α = .84) and its validity: greater morningness preference was associated with earlier MSF from MCTQ (r = –.52). CSM scores were distributed over its full range, with a mean of 34, and did not differ between sexes, although females were earlier than males by 23 minutes in MSF. Regarding age, eveningness estimated with both CSM and MSF was greatest in subjects aged 16–18 years, and a shift toward eveningness during puberty and a shift back toward morningness in older age was observed. The Polish version of the CSM consisted of two components of morningness. Cutoff scores were: for evening types (lower 10%) 24 or less, for morning types (upper 10%) 43 or more. The Polish CSM presents good psychometric properties, which are similar to those reported in other language versions, and also presents sex/age patterns similar to those found previously.

Individual differences in diurnal preferences and circadian rhythms are viewed as an interesting dimension of human personality. Previous research has examined various psychological correlates of diurnal preference. Evening types reported psychological and psychosomatic disturbances more frequently and intensively than morning types and morning types have a healthier lifestyle than evening types. Depression was also related to eveningness as were bulimic behaviour and seasonal affected disorders (SAD). Given these studies, one would expect a positive relationship between satisfaction with life or happiness (general well-being; Diener et al. (J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985)) and morningness. There was a significant positive correlation between morningness and satisfaction with life (r = 0.177; p = 0.023; N = 164).

Shift work has been reported to affect the worker’s health and well-being. However, the many interacting factors involved in shift work make it difficult to understand the mechanism underlying its effects. The currently rising demand for shift workers in the Philippine business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, particularly in the contact center sector, has spurred increased interest in research on the effects of shift work on Filipino workers. The fact that shift work affects employees’ health and well-being, and in turn affects economic productivity, gives enough reason for doing shift work studies. In this paper, we review research publications, project reports and theses (graduate and undergraduate) to determine the current state of knowledge on shift work in the Philippines and to define future research directions. Results of this review indicate that many aspects of shift work have been explored in studies in the Philippines, but there is still a big gap in knowledge that needs to be addressed. While there are studies that investigated health effects, job satisfaction, job performance, lifestyle, risk behaviors and other topics, the number of studies done in the country is still quite limited and the variables investigated do not allow comparison with situations in other countries. There is still a need for more detailed studies to be able to provide empirical evidence on shift work’s effects on Filipino workers and to be able to make relevant interventions to improve the workers’ health and well-being. In terms of research questions, there are no local studies that looked into chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer. There are also no published studies yet that investigated the Filipino chronotype in relation to shift work. The chronotype characterizes how an individual’s internal biological clock synchronizes to the external clock. The importance of chronotype in shift work research has been shown in studies in other countries. However, the chronotype variation among Filipinos is not yet known. Other untapped topics on shift work research in the Philippines include light and shift work, speech ability and shift work, actual physical work load and time pressure, exposure to heat, dust or other hazards during shift work, dermatological problems related to shift work, genes and shift work, social and psychological aspects of shift work and long term effects of shift work. We also included here a framework of research approaches on how to thoroughly investigate the effects of shift work on the worker’s health and well-being. The framework was adopted from the European project consortium called ClockWORK which aimed to optimize the individual’s structure of work, free time and sleep. An offshoot of the ClockWORK project is the PhilSHIFT initiative. PhilSHIFT is an interdisciplinary group of researchers from the University of the Philippines and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München studying chronotype variation among Filipinos and shift work in the Philippines.

Rozdział dotyczy polskiego tłumaczenia kwestionariusza do pomiaru chronotypu - Sleep Wake Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SWPAQ). W rozdziale przedstawione są dwa podejścia do badania różnic indywidualnych w zakresie zegara biologicznego: jednowymiarowe i wielowymiarowe. Prezentowane jest najpierw, najbardziej wiodące, podejście jednowymiarowe, które opisuje ludzi na wymiarze ranności-wieczorności, inaczej chronotypu. Przedstawione są główne narzędzia psychometryczne do badania chronotypu w ujęciu jednowymiarowym oraz omówione są główne różnice między tymi kwestionariuszami, również w odniesieniu do najczęściej stosowanego na świecie narzędzia, Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire. Na tym tle prezentowane są trzy kwestionariusze odnoszące się do koncepcji wielowymiarowych. Najnowszy z nich, 72-item SWPAQ, został dokładniej opisany oraz zostało zamieszczone jego polskie tłumaczenie. Na koniec pokazano przykład różnicy we wnioskach z badań stosujących jednowymiarową koncepcję chronotypu oraz dwuwymiarową. Dwuwymiarowa koncepcja chronotypu traktuje ranność i wieczorność jako dwa względnie niezależne wymiary.

The aim of this study was to develop a Polish version of the reduced Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire (rMEQ). The sample consisted of 1191 university students (52% females) aged 18–24 years (M = 21.46; SD = 1.49). The Polish version of rMEQ resulted in four items, whose numbers in the original Horne and Östberg Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) were 1, 4, 9, 19. Cronbach's α coefficient was .732, and the inter-item correlations ranged between .396 and .452. Based on the eigenvalue-greater-than-one criterion, a one factor was excluded which explained 56% of variance and had eigenvalue of 2.258. The correlation between Polish versions of rMEQ and MEQ was .89, and based on the two questionnaires separately, 81% of participants were categorised into the same chronotype group. Age and gender were not related to rMEQ and MEQ scores.

Morningness-eveningness, or chronotype, reflects the timing of sleep-wake patterns across a 24-hour day. Extant research has revealed that chronotype correlates with numerous psychological constructs including cognitive ability. In the current research, we examined how people with different chronotypes perceive their intelligence. We expected eveningness to be positively associated with subjectively assessed intelligence (SAI) because evening chronotypes demonstrate slightly higher intelligence than morning individuals. Furthermore, we considered personality traits (Big Five and narcissism) and objective intelligence (measured with standardized tests of fluid and verbal IQ) as potential variables that could account for this relationship. Across two studies (N = 504 and 232), we found that eveningness was associated with higher SAI. This relationship remained significant even after controlling for objective intelligence. In Study 1, we also found that when conscientiousness and neuroticism were analyzed together with chronotype, the magnitude of positive association between eveningness and SAI increased. Furthermore, Study 2 revealed that evening individuals exhibited higher narcissism, which fully accounted for their intelligence self-views. In the discussion, we speculate that daily struggles of evening chronotypes to function in morning-oriented society give them a basis to think positively about their intelligence to the extent of positive bias.

Sleep is an essential physiological process which profoundly affects a wide range of biological activities. It is now known that sleep supports myriad vital functions in the central nervous system. This includes neural plasticity, learning, memory, cognition and emotional regulation. Additionally, it affects basic processes such as cardiovascular, immunological, and metabolic activity. Evidence from multiple lines of research has thus shown that good quality of sleep is essential for both survival and optimal functioning of life. Considerable evidence also supports the conclusion that even minimal dysfunctions in circadian regulation can significantly disrupt sleep and broadly affect body physiology. As a consequence, it is now appreciated that the therapy of sleep disorders is more complex than was once thought. At present, several clinical disciplines have recognized the significance of the biological clock in health and illness and are incorporating this knowledge into treatment programs. Recent decades have seen the emergence of chronotherapies, i.e., treatment strategies that are aimed at producing adjustments in the circadian clock. The final objective of these approaches is to affect basic cellular and physiological processes, which in turn may be at the root of disorders in, e.g., , immune functioning, metabolic activity, and psychiatric disturbance. It is suggested that the integration of chronobiological perspectives into mainstream medical disciplines would be of significant benefit, both for the reduction of the prevalence of diseases and their treatment. This review considers the physiology of sleep and the importance of timekeeping mechanisms in the regulation of the overall health of individuals.

The nasal cycle is an ultradian rhythm of nasal congestion and decongestion with a quasi-periodicity of 60 to 240 minutes. Keyser made the first formal description and the use of the term nasal cycle in 1895. However the concept of the nasal cycle and an understanding of its role in our life had existed for long in Indian thought. The Vedic science of understanding the function of the nasal cycle was known as SwarodayaVigjnan (swara = sonorous sound produced by the airflow through the nostrils in the nasal cycle, udaya = functioning state, and vigjnan = knowledge). The Shivaswarodaya, an ancient treatise in Sanskrit literature advises the Yogi to undertake quieter, passive activities (soumyakarya) when the left nostril flow is dominant (ida / chandraswara), to engage in challenging and exertional activities (roudrakarya) when right nostril is dominant (pingala / suryaswara) and to relax or meditate when the bilateral nasal flow is operational (sushumnaswara) as it was considered to be unsuitable for performance of worldly activities. Ida swara (left nostril dominance) was described as feminine, Shakti and moon-like (chandra) while the pingalaswara (right nostril dominance) was described as masculine, Shiva and sun-like (surya). Traditional Indian description of Ardhanarishwara consists of Shakti (the female element) being depicted on the left and Shiva (the male element) on the right side of the body. Such a notion of left-right, female-male duality was common in oriental traditional medicine as also in western alchemy.