PUBLIC TALK: Sleep, Body Clocks and Health: biology to new therapeutics

A public lecture by Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience, Senior Fellow Brasenose College, University of Oxford and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Our internal 24 hour biological clock (circadian clock) and daily sleep processes interact to play an essential, yet poorly recognised, role in our lives. Sleep is not just the simple suspension of physical movement but is an active state when the brain coordinates indispensable activities that define our ability to function whilst awake. The quality of our sleep profoundly influences our cognition, levels of social interaction, empathy, alertness, mood, memory, physical strength, susceptibility to infection, and every other aspect of our waking biology. We are beginning to understand how these critical processes are generated and regulated and many surprising findings have surfaced. For example, until recently it seemed inconceivable to most vision researchers and ophthalmologists that there could be an unrecognised type of light sensor within the eye. Yet we now know that there exists a “3rd class” of photoreceptor in the eye that detects the dawn/dusk cycle and which sets the internal clock to the solar day. The past decade has witnessed remarkable progress in understanding how the brain generates and regulates our daily patterns of sleep and wake. In parallel with this understanding, there has been a growing realisation that our sleep and circadian rhythms cannot be ignored in our headlong dash to generate a 24/7 society. This presentation will review the biology of sleep and circadian rhythms, what happens when these systems go wrong and how recent discoveries are allowing new therapeutics to be developed that will help correct abnormal patterns of sleep and wake.