Melatonin
Circadian rhythms
- Many physiological processes and behavioural patterns occur in regular, daily rhythms in organisms throughout the plant and animal kingdoms
- Many animal species are only active for a specific part of the 24-hour cycle e.g. nocturnal animals are only active at night
- Humans are diurnal meaning that we are more awake during daylight hours
- Humans are adapted to live in a 24-hour cycle and many aspects of our physiology and behaviour, including physical activity, sleep, body temperature, and secretion of hormones, follow specific and regular cycles throughout the 24-hour period
- These daily cycles are known as circadian rhythms
- In humans, many circadian rhythms are influenced by the hormone melatonin
- Melatonin is secreted by the pineal gland, which is located in the brain
- Melatonin secretion increases in the evening in response to darkness and decreases at dawn in response to light, leading to our diurnal behaviour patterns
Melatonin and sleep patterns
- Although melatonin affects many aspects of human physiology and behaviour, one of the main circadian rhythms it controls is our sleep-wake cycle
- The pineal gland secretes melatonin into the blood
- Production is influenced by the detection of light and dark by the retina of the eye
- Signals are then transmitted to the pineal gland according to the amount of daylight a person is exposed to and varies with changes in day length (this is why the pineal gland is sometimes referred to as both an endocrine clock and an endocrine calendar)
- Melatonin's target sites are found in many areas of the brain including the hypothalamus and pituitary glands, and also in the cells of the immune system, gonads, kidney, and the cardiovascular system, blood vessels, and intestinal tract
- Increasing melatonin levels lead to feelings of tiredness and promote sleep
- Decreasing melatonin levels lead to the body's preparation for waking up and staying awake during the day
- The pineal gland secretes melatonin into the blood
- Experiments have also suggested that
- Increased melatonin at night contributes to the night-time drop in core body temperature in humans
- Melatonin receptors in the kidney enable melatonin produced at night to cause the night-time decrease in urine production in humans
- Melatonin is still released in the absence of light and dark signals, but on a slightly longer cycle than the usual 24 hours
- Subjects living in the dark with no access to natural daylight still release melatonin on a roughly 24 hour cycle
- This suggests that the role of light is to reset the melatonin system every day to keep the circadian rhythm in line with daylight hours
Secretion of melatonin graph
The production of melatonin is influenced by the amount of daylight a person is exposed to: melatonin levels peak during