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Discuss the role of endogenous pacemakers in the control of circadian rhythms
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The main biological clock in humans is the suprachiasmatic
nucleus (SCN) located in the hypothalamus, which controls Circadian rhythms
that lasts about 24 hours
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And these secretions of hormones are responsible for the maintenance of
our circadian rhythms, for example, the sleep-wake cycle
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This view is supported by DeCoursey et al
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After 80 days,
significantly more of the SCN-lesioned chipmunks were killed by weasels, partly
because these chipmunks remained awake in their burrows and the weasels
could hear the noise and were able to locate the chipmunks
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However, evidence has shown that some people’s Endogenous Pacemakers are
not running for 24 hours but 24
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Such Exogenous Zeitgebers include sunlight, noise and social cues
that give us hints of what time it is and psychologists have been investigating
what happens when a person is free from these external cues
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The reason why he carried out his studies underground is because
such environment is free from external cues (light, clocks) and the only thing
influencing his behavior was his ‘Internal Clock’ or the so-called ‘free-running
rhythm’
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He resurfaced on 17th September believing the date
was 20th August
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Hence, it showed that despite the absence of Exogenous
Zeitgebers, his circadian rhythms are maintained and therefore supporting the
existence of an internal ‘body clock’
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Again showing that even if external cues are removed, our sleep-wake
cycle is still maintained by our Endogenous Pacemakers
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For
instance, participants in all the studies were isolated from variables that might
affect their circadian rhythms (E
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daylight, clocks and radios), but they weren’t
isolated from artificial light because it’s thought by the experimenters that dim
light wouldn’t affect the Circadian rhythm
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1999 proposed that
this is not the case
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g
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As a result, Czeisler’s study showed that the
methodologies of the above studies might be flawed given that participants
weren’t completely isolated from Exogenous Zeitgebers therefore affecting the
claim that our circadian rhythm is solely controlled by our Endogenous
Pacemakers
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For example, they have all ignored the difference in one’s Cycle
length
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1999 they found that Circadian cycles on
different people can vary from 13-65 hours
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2000 have also
found that people have innately different starting times for their cycles
E
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morning people wake early and go to bed early whereas evening people
wake late and go to bed late
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Therefore, as individual and gender differences weren’t taken into
account it reduces the studies’ population validity
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Folkard et al
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However, they
were given a clock and they agreed to go to bed when clock indicated 11:45pm
and get up when it indicates 7:45am
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At first participants’ circadian cycle
matched the clock but as the clock was quickened, their rhythm no longer
matched the clock and continued to follow a 24-hour cycle rather than 22, except
for one participant who did adapt to the 22-hour cycle
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Nonetheless as the experiment was over,
participants took only few days to resynchronize their cycle to available external
time cues such as clock and daylight, thus emphasizing the importance of
Exogenous Zeitgebers, too
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Yet, research into the sleep-wake cycle focus heavily on
biological mechanisms and this is Deterministic in the sense that they ignored
free will and the fact that people can override biologically determined behaviors
by making choices about what they do
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1977
that sometimes it may not be possible to override biological factors and
biological rhythms
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9 hours where Exogenous Zeitgebers made no difference to his internal clock,
so he found it difficult to function in daily life
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And this brings us to the criticism that the proposed role
of Endogenous Pacemakers is placing too much emphasis on the nature side of
the nature vs
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Therefore to conclude, it is important for us to know that Endogenous
Pacemakers play an important role in controlling our Circadian cycle but it’s
more important to know that it works closely with Exogenous Zeitgebers

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