Researchers are hopeful that the findings will pave the way to treat sleep disorders, such as a jet lag, owing to malfunctioning of the body clock.
BBC quoted lead researcher Professor Hugh Piggins, an expert in neuroscience at the University of Manchester, as saying, "There's a lot of interest in the pharmaceutical industry, obviously, to try to develop chemical treatments to reset your daily clock to help counteract things like jetlag."
"Or, perhaps more importantly, different kind of sleep disorders for which dysfunctions in this clock are often involved," he said.
The research will allow a new approach to being able to tune our daily clock, Piggins said.
Study details
For the study, researchers from the University of Manchester examined special human cells, which they believe, play a vital role in regulating an individual’s body clock.
As shown by the past studies, the cells were thought to be inactive during the day. However, the current study nullifies that view.
Findings of the study suggest that human brain produces more cells during the daylight and very minimal at night.
"The traditional model said the clock and the brain communicated to the rest of the brain via the number of electrical impulses that the brain cells were producing," Piggins said.
"These impulses would travel around the brain, telling it what time of day it is. What we've found is in fact that there are at least two types of cells in this part of the brain," he added.
The cell function
Researchers explained that the brain cells contain a key gene known as 'per1' which lends unusually high levels of "excitability" in them. This makes these cells appear quiet or even dead; however, these cells calm down, recover and become active again later on.
This activity tells the human body when to wake up, meaning thereby that the brain cells are inactive during the night compared to the daytime.
Jet lag--the sleeping disorder
According to Wikipedia, jet lag is a physiological condition which is a consequence of alterations in the body clock of a person.
It results from rapid long-distance travelling, such as on a jet plane. The body clock gets out of synchronization while travelling across varied time zones as it experiences daylight and darkness contrary to the environment to which it has grown accustomed.
The symptoms include irregular sleep patterns, temporary insomnia, digestive problems, headache, disorientation, mild irritability. Jet lags may last for many days and recovery pattern differ from person to person.
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