36% of our lives are spent sleeping. This means that if you live to be 90, then you'll have spent 32 years sleeping.

Research by Prof. Russell Foster and other highlights that a good night's rest isn't a luxury--it's critical for your brain and for your health

Talk abstract:

We and most organisms possess a 24h biological (circadian) clock which acts to ‘fine-tune’ physiology and behaviour to the varying demands of the day/night cycle. Such a clock is only useful if biological time remains synchronised to solar time, and the daily change in the gross amount of light (irradiance) at dawn or dusk provides the most reliable indicator of the time of day. In mammals the “master clock” is located within small paired nuclei at the base of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN). The SCN receive direct retinal projections which adjust the clock to the light/dark cycle, and eye loss in mammals blocks this completely. But how does the eye detect this light to provide the re-setting signal? Surprisingly, we found that visually blind mice, with genetic defects in the rods and cones, could still use their eyes to regulate the circadian system. These, and a host of subsequent experiments including studies in humans with genetic defects of the eye, showed that the processing of light information by the circadian and classical visual systems is different and that the mammalian eye contains an additional non-rod, non-cone photoreceptor based upon a small number of photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (pRGCs). These remarkable, and recently discovered receptors use “melanopsin” as their photopigment, which is sensitive in the blue part of the spectrum around 480nm. This presentation will explore the discovery, biology and clinical importance of this third photoreceptor system of the eye.
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About Prof. Russell Foster:

Russell Grant Foster, CBE, FRS FMedSci (born 1959) is a British professor of circadian neuroscience, currently based at Brasenose College at the University of Oxford. He and his group are credited with the discovery of the non-rod, non-cone, photosensitive ganglion cells in the mammalian retina which provide input to the circadian rhythm system. Foster was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2008 and a member of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council council in 2011. (from Wikipedia)