Health

Are You A Night Owl? We Are Closer to Knowing Why

A surprisingly common mutation causes this sleep disorder by changing a vital component of the biological clock that maintains the body’s daily rhythms.

Photo by Mpho Mojapelo on Unsplash

Sleep shows up in several well-known films. In the 2010 Christopher Nolan heist film Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a thief who steals information by infiltrating individuals’ dreams and subconscious minds. Nolan based the movie on lucid dreaming, a state in which you are aware of your dreams and can exercise a modicum of control over them.

Have you seen the sci-fi film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? The 2004 movie features Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as star-crossed lovers. The two erase each other from their memory using the services of a fictional company. The procedure happens during sleep; Joel Barish, the Carrey character, spends much of the movie in a dream state as he has his memories erased.

Our inner clock: A brief history

During the 1700s, the astronomer Jean Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan studied mimosa plants. He found that the plant’s leaves would open towards the sun during the daytime but closed at dusk. But what if the plant lived only in darkness? The leaves continued…