'Round-the-clock' lifestyle can disrupt metabolism, brain and behavior

(PhysOrg.com) -- In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud argued that modern society was hard on human psychology, forcing people to get along in unnaturally close quarters. Now newly published research from The Rockefeller University points out a different discontent in the developed world, namely, the disruption of our natural sleep cycles, thanks to the ubiquity of electric lighting. Experiments on mice, published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that throwing off their evolutionarily ancient circadian rhythms by artificially altering the length of their days has a substantial impact on the body and the brain. The work suggests that our modern round-the-clock lifestyle could disrupt metabolism, interfere with learning and impact behavior in ways that we’re just beginning to understand.