Evolution Of Sleep

Summary of "The Evolution of Sleep: 700 Million Years of Melatonin"

Carl Zimmer wrote this article about the evolution of sleep. He says that we may think we have some control of when we go to sleep but we do not. When they day becomes dark and the sun is gone your brain has a chain reaction that ends up releasing melatonin into your brain. This then latches onto your neurons pushing the brain into sleep. Then when the sun comes out it gets the melatonin out. We try and fight these by doing something that we thinks keeps us awake but it never works. When we travel into a different time zone we think we can just change our clocks but the melatonin drags behind making us want to fall asleep at our normal time. Melatonin actually evolved over 700 million years ago. Scientists believe that we got melatonin from are oceangoing ancestors.  Melatonin is more important than we think and it starts a huge chain reaction says Carl Zimmer (New York Times, 2014).

I found this article extremely interesting. What I found especially interesting was whenever I go to Ireland every summer which is the opposite time zone is that we can never get adjusted too the the time change. I always thought it was just because we lived somewhere and we always went to bed at the same time. I never knew that it was due to to the fact of this. I find this extremely interesting and I want to learn more about it. If I was to interview the man who wrote this I would ask him what does sleeping pills do to you. Do they harm you or are they okay to take? Also is there a way to change it so humans become nocturnal? This seems like an intriguing paper and I would love to learn more about it.

APA Citation 

Zimmer, C. (2014, October 2). The Evolution of Sleep: 700 Million Years of 

     Melatonin. New York Times.