Steps Help Brain Adjust to Daylight Saving

March 29, 2006 -- -- Daylight-saving time does more than just rob us of an hour of sleep. When folks all across the country reset their clocks Sunday morning, they will also be forcing a vital part of their brains to do something it really doesn't want to do.

The biological clock, found in just about everything from pond scum to humans, is the key player in a complex system that controls the respiratory system, blood pressure and heartbeat, sleep-wake cycles and even such seemingly unrelated problems as medical toxicity and depression.

Only in recent years have scientists begun to understand this vital clock, which is only about the size of a kernel of corn. It has a dramatic impact on our mental and physical well-being. Yet we ask it routinely to reset itself as we zip about the world, traveling across multiple time zones. And on the first Sunday of every April, we tell it to spring forward one hour.

"It's a force that is manifested in every aspect of our daily existence," says biologist David Glass of Kent State University, who has been studying the clock for about 15 years.

Glass likens the clock to an orchestra conductor.

"You have a conductor and maybe 100 people who are playing various instruments," he says. "Music is rhythmical, just like our daily activities. We have a master clock located in the brain, and that clock is like the conductor.

"In our body we have hundreds of subordinate oscillators, or pacemakers, which are like all the players in the orchestra. Without the conductor, or master clock, you would end up with nothing but noise."

So much needs to be learned about how the biological clock ticks that laboratories have sprung up around the world. The University of Houston, for example, has five different labs with nearly 40 researchers.

Among the findings reported by various researchers: