| Summary: | Summary: The circadian system plays an important role in human physiology and pathophysiology. It controls all processes that repeat in our body within a 24-hour period. It is a complex system that works from the behavioral level to the molecular level. This system is controlled from the central brain structure located in the hypothalamus, but its rhythmic manifestations can also be observed in almost any individual body cells. Disruption of this system in humans is often associated with the development of affective disorders or neurodegenerative diseases. The affective disorder has often been associated with a phase shift in some of the circadian driven outputs, as for example, rhythm in their physical activity. The patients with neurodegenerative disorders are seen to have circadian amplitude damping in a series of circadian rhythms. Therapeutic approaches which aim to stabilize and strengthen the circadian rhythms have also a positive long term effect on the course of these diseases. Interestingly, in the genetic studies of these diseases, a couple of specific polymorphisms have been identified in areas related to the molecular mechanism of the internal clock. In this thesis, I tried to look at the human circadian rhythms from several different angles. In the first part of this thesis I tried to identify...
|
|---|
