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Diego Golombek - "Time from the inside".
This has to do with searching for time from the inside.
What happens with time from the inside,
and a cyclic time resembling that mentioned by other speakers moments ago.
There are many ways of looking for that inside time.
We can think time as a scale: how long does it last that inside time.
We can conceive that time as a sense.
Is there a sense of time like there is sight, hearing, smell?
Is there an organ that measures time in the brain?
Can time be learned? Is there a process of time learning...
that also has to do with the brain?
Is time related with culture, in terms of Biology?
Are there biological tempos in different cultures?
And of course, does time have to do with cycles taking place inside ourselves?
In this talk I'll talk about time as a cycle,
and I will tell you about some experiments.
There are many possible dimensions of time in Biology,
as there are many possible scales of time in Biology.
Such scales encompass cycles very short
of microseconds.
Thanks to microseconds we know that a sound comes from here or there.
The ear is able to calculate microseconds.
We also have very long times
in the order of years, of seasons
beings that change from year to year, they change their skin
and have seasonable reproduction,
beings that have cycles of many years.
Those are also biological rhythms.
Nevertheless, I will stick to a intermediate time that is that in the range called circadian, from 'circa diem', 'around a day'.
Rhythms that last around a day.
And all the experiments often
when we sleep, when we are awake
during mood changes
are daily o circadian rhythms.
There are many stories on circadian rhythms.
We will begin by one that rather than historical is mythological
that has to do with this man,
Febo or Apollo, according to your favorite mythology
as a god, what did he have to do? Exit the Olympus, and travel in his golden chariot, pulled by four horses.
[T.N: audio fails]
And Febo, among other things, we see him there with his four horses and golden rays around his head
went on seducing young ladies.
And from these young ladies, one of those falling in love with the Sun
was called Clitie.
I'll take a step aside so that you can see her. She's hot, isn't she?
So Clitie stared at the Sun
And what did Febo do? He flirted. He went 'Hum, yeah, I don't know, one staring at me'
And she began threatening him: 'Notice me, notice me and something will happen'
And finally she began to transform herself.
Is not quite clear, but she began transforming from her feet
and after some time she became...
a sunflower.
Aaaahh.. (laughter)
Excuse me: 'After some time she became a sunflower'. (Audience exclaims)
You are something else, aren't you?
This, is a biological rhythm.
A biological rhythm technically boring
because for the sunflower to turn around, someone has to tell them the time.
Talking jargon, we call it an exogenous biological rhythm:
in order to exist, somebody says if it is night or day.
Of course, Biology wise is much more interesting to think of an endogenous biological rhythm.
That there is something inside ourselves that measures time,
a clock inside our body, a biological clock.
Many people thought on this clock for many a time
and we'll see beyond mythology, rhythm stories.
One of the most amusing is that of this man called Lineo
very well known among biologists because he invented the genus-species classification
He was a classic botanic from Uppsala University in Sweeden
and he used to contemplate flowers
and invented a floral clock.
From which one is able to know what time it is around the world according to which flowers are open and which are closed in the countryside.
This clock is around 15-minute precise, if one knows a lot on flowers, of course.
But this is not an experiment, it's a description.
The first chrono-biological experiment was performed not by a biologist, but by a French astronomer
called de Mairan, around 1700's
and this astronomer had a mimosa pudica plant in his observatory.
Do you know which are the mimosa pudica plants?
Those which are sensitive, they move after being touched.
And he noticed that its leaves were spread during daytime and folded during nighttime.
Any of us would have said in the 1700's or nowadays:
That is because they are either receiving or not sunlight.
But this guy performed an experiment that was technologically quite complicated:
He took the flowerpot inside a wardrobe
to see whether the leaves kept on moving.
And the result was fascinating:
the leaves kept on moving.
This would be the control condition: spread leaves when exposed to sunlight, folded leaves during nighttime
and inside the wardrobe the leaves continue to move.
There is something inside the plant keeping track of time, there's a biological clock inside the plant.
As there are historical examples, there are counterexamples.
I will express myself highlighting biological rhythms
and won't mention the word biorhythms,
which is quite untruthful, inaccurate
made up. And I use the expression 'made up' with premeditation
by a man who psychoanalysts are quite familiar with,
Wittels Fritz,
he's the one on the right. Who's the one on the left side?
Sigmund, right?. Young. We're not used to see him without his pipe.
They were quite close. Further, as a good otorhinolaryngologist, Fritz performed surgery on Freud's nose three times.
Fritz invented biorhythms on single-case basis.
He was told that a lumberjack cut more trees every 21 days.
And he said "Aha, there's a 21-day physical cycle".
Afterwards, he added a 28-day emotional cycle,
apparently related to the menstrual cycle,
later on, another person, added a 33-day intellectual cycle.
This is false, it's not like this.
Although one may make a living on biorhythms
which is, by the way, a secondary activity of our lab.
(Laughter) But, why do I stress this?
Because when referring to biological rhythms or chronobiology, one fancies something like this
which happens in a bookstore in Buenos Aires:
One goes looking for a book on chronobiology to a real store in Buenos Aires
and this is what happens:
this is a fair book from a French author called "The biological rhythms".
Notice who our neighbors are:
"Aloe Vera, a miraculous plant", "Predictive astrology",
"Practical guide to chrono-ocultism", "A great chrono-biologist: Ernesto Che Guevara"
and my favorite, "The big cook book to the better living and idling"
'To idle', bits me why it is 'to idle'. I idle, you idle.
I wish at some point they'll take us from here and put us in the gardening section, sports section, something a bit more serious.
Because indeed, chronobiology, the one that studies biological rhythms,
is a serious discipline.
I say so because I make a living of it, if I didn't say so it wouldn't have credibility.
And it has certain general patterns,
for example, that happen in every animal I've studied.
Being on a planet that rotates
has marked us evolutionarily,
it has selected beings that rotate with the Planet
that have daily rhythms of approximately 24 hours.
And this is not trivial.
One bacterium that live for a few hours,
when inside a colony, have 24-hour rhythms.
A creature at the bottom of the Sea,
that has no contact with sunlight or that is subterranean,
has 24-hour rhythms as well.
Strong as that is this mark and the natural selection favoring rhythms.
Let's go back to de Marian, to the experiment of this astronomer.
This describes chronobiology in the following way:
we have biological rhythms in whatever you want to measure
and they agree with the world, the world tells them what the time is.
Jargon wise, the world is called Zeitgeber (time giver).
Which was de Marian's experiment?
To eliminate the Zeitgeber and prove that rhythms persisted.
Consequently, we propose that there is something measuring time and we name it 'clock'.
This is chrono-biology: 3 little boxes
and 2 arrows.
As simple as that, it generates the most basic questions regarding chronobiology.
What would a biologist say regarding this schema?
Obviously, what is that clock?
where is it?, how does it work?
But also, how is it put on time?
And further, how is it that this clock tells the body what the time is?
These are the questions we make ourselves at the lab on a daily basis.
But let's go back a bit.
What is this notion of an endogenous rhythm?
What for?, if the world tells us what time it is.
At any moment we can look through the window or go outside the cave
and realize whether it is day or night.
This question has been with chronobiology for a long time
and it's quite a confusing distinction, we're going to give an example of how confusing it is.
This man comes with his bike, right?, and needs to know the time
and he asks to peasant who is quite busy.
"What's the time?", the peasant touches the donkey's "parts"
and answers: "Well, 10:35".
He can't believe it and asks: "But, are you sure?"
And indeed, the peasant checks again...
"Yes, 10:35, 10:36, give or take."
"Ok, fine". And he puts his watch on time
and goes to do what he has to do.
He doesn't quite believe him.
And as we're about to see, he comes right back and he wants to check the experiment.
As we see the peasant is as busy as he was before.
And he wants to check. "Hi, how is it going?"
"Everything's fine, here am I."
"Well, I'd like to know if my watch is still on time. Please tell me what time is it".
"Again? OK... let's see. Well, now it's 5.30".
(A quarter past seven, sorry)
"A quarter past seven? Exactly! Sharp!"
"Well, yeah..."
"But please, you have to tell me how you do it."
And now he's about to reveal his secret,
actually he's checking the clock on the church's tower. (Laughter)
This is a perfect example on how one might mistake an internal hour source,
the donkey,
with an external hour source.
If one goes to the lab at the same time every day,
one is telling the time to the animals,
when one thinks they do not have other time.
If one performs an experiment on human beings,
and lets them watch TV or feeds them at particular hours,
one is letting them know the time.
And that is something to avoid while performing an experiment.
When I started with this many years ago, twenty-something years ago,
I did not believe in endogenous rhythms,
precisely because I thought they were pointless
considering that the world told us the time.
So I looked for a situation in which the world didn't tell us the time.
And this is one of those situations:
Antartica.
In Antartica, during some part of the year, the Sun doesn't come down,
during other parts of the year, the Sun doesn't come up.
This is a good moment to test that endogenous clock.
We were able to do a campaign here, precisely where the question mark is,
at Shetland Islands, in an small island called Medialuna Islands,
it was one kilometer long and an Army base.
So we asked ourselves: "What do we do here? We can study native animals,
sea birds, mammals, invertebrates,
people from the base itself", of course...
And among these options we selected the most human:
that turn out to be these guys,
which at least didn't wake us at 6 am at the sound of the San Lorenzo's March.
So we spent several days studying these guys
at a moment when the world doesn't tell what the time is.
And what happened, independently from what we've measured,
throughout a day when the Sun doesn't go down and temperature stays the same,
these animals know that a certain hour they have to do something
and at other hour they have to do another thing.
Great! It's worth having a clock because the world doesn't always tell us the time.
Let's then look for that clock.
This is one of the most amazing adventures in Neurosciences:
to look for the biological clock.
Maybe, the most interesting thing is that the first to realize how to look for it,
wasn't a chronobiologist,
but a "cronopio".
Indeed, it was...
Indeed it was Julio Cortázar,
who in 1952 wrote:
"Time is born in the eyes, everybody knows that".
Translating: we don't know where the clock is,
but we know that it puts itself on time through light.
Let's disguise ourselves as light, let's go through the eye and see where we end up.
And the experiment might be summarized here.
Well, what could be seen there,
was supposedly not meant to occur,
which is that light entered through the eyes,
and through connections between the retina and the brain,
ends up in some nuclei.
This isn't mine as you can see, it's borrowed from Howard Hughes.
It ends up in some nuclei that know the time.
They're called suprachiasmatic nuclei, the technical distinction is not very important.
So, the light has something to tell the clock,
and that is the question I've been asking myself for many years:
what does the light tell the clock in order to put it on time?
A clock not on time is useless.
A clock that loses or gains some minutes, after many days
it lost or gained many hours,
and from a daytime creature I turned into a nighttime creature, or viceversa.
I won't find a girlfriend, I won't find food, I will find something that eats me.
Consequently it's useless not to have a synchronized clock.
So, the question at my lab is:
what does the light tell the clock neurochemically wise?
We begin to name what happens from the light,
until something changes in the clock.
And while doing so, we found several molecules
inside cells involved in this communication between the light and the clock.
One of those molecules is called cyclic GMP (T.N.: GMPc)
So we said: we know there has to be GMPc between the light and the clock
what would happen if we increase it?
there will be a bigger entrance for the light
and the clock will synchronize more easily.
How can we increase GMPc?
Well, for example, let's decrease its destruction.
It turns out, there are compounds that destroy, and that inhibit GMPc destruction.
One of those is called sildenafil.
Does it ring a bell?
What is sildenafil? You may confess.
Sildenafil, is ***®
So, we were at the lab one night discussing
'Hey, and if we give them ***®?'
'Nah, you dumb, how are you going to give them ***®?'
Well, let's do it, we're serious scientists.
We performed the experiment,
and it was absolutely amazing.
What we did was a jetlag model,
that is: a model of flight desynchronization,
for hamsters.
We sent them to France. Actually, we didn't have the budget to send them to France,
so we simply changed their darkness' schedule.
We made light go off
6 minutes, sorry, 6 hours earlier.
As if they were traveling to France.
What you have here is a control experiment.
Notice, light goes off at that time, it's a nocturnal animal
it's active.
If it goes off earlier,
it takes a lot of days, like what happens to us when flying to Europe or Australia,
it takes a lot of days for us to adapt.
If we give it ***®, besides being much happier,
it takes less days to adapt.
We said to ourselves, 'this is remarkable', right?
And so remarkable was that this experiment had great repercussion.
Much more than any other experiment I made in my life.
For example, Fontanarrosa saying:
'Indeed, I took some ***®, I was ready to face a night of passion and I fell asleep'
Or Sendra saying:
'It's true that ***® fights insomnia,
when I take ***® my wife tells me she wants to sleep'.
Or the great honor of appearing in Barcelona Magazine ®,
where 'Aroused rodents might cure insomnia: *** ®'s new indications'
Where we say marvelous things
such as 'the idea of giving them ***® was quite mature' (T.N: idiomatic joke in Spanish)
or 'this finding came on hard, I mean conveniently' (T.N: idiomatic joke in Spanish)
Truth be told, the one who wrote this was an up tight biologist,
who is no longer working with us because he traveled to Europe.
But the best recognition was an e-mail that arrived unexpectedly,
which said 'you and your fellow authors have been selected to win one of the IgNobel Awards'
We didn't have an idea on what it consisted of
but is great: it's an award to experiments that at first make us laugh
and then make us think.
We obviously attended,
and here it is our plastic duck
that is my IgNoble Award,
and even most amazing, my fellow Award winners,
like for example the President of the International Association of Sword-Swallowers.
(Laughter)
That is the one here
who wrote a paper called "Sword-swallowing and its adverse effects". (Laughter)
And here he's demonstrating some of the adverse effects.
And these guys here,
and these here with their jaws-dropped are Nobel Prize winners
for real.
They were watching how this man was preforming a scientific experiment.
So, and what about this? What about this?
We're walking clocks,
whatever the thing we measure during the day
is going to vary.
This summarizes a lot of variables,
that measured at different moments,
are going to have a maximun,
our body temperature is going to be maximun in the afternoon,
our cortisol level in the after hours,
our alert capacity, our strength, everything is going to change during the day.
Consequently, the time dimension is of great importance
Biology wise.
Not everybody is going to change in the same way
some will be more "morning persons", others "evening persons",
what is commonly called in jargon 'owls' and 'larks'
Now we, who are mostly intermediate,
we are already going
a bit further from our neutral chronobiological schedule, right?
We're already asking ourselves 'how long is this guy going to talk?'
'enough already, right? more or less'
Or, we are texting: 'how are the kids? how are the kids, that is already late'
Basically...
We aren't owls or larks throughout our lifetime.
Teenagers are typically owls.
And not because of cultural reasons.
There are cultural reasons as well, but teenagers' clock hands
are set later.
For that reason they tend to do things later, and wake up in the morning with great effort
and the nonsense of going to school at 7.30am represents a great effort to them.
When I say this in a school I turn into a hero.
They say: 'Finally science serves some purpose!'
They say: 'I want to become a scientist!' indeed.
This fact, besides from changing while growing,
changes genetically.
There are genetic inclinations,
there are variations in certain genes
that make us owls, more evening persons,
or larks, more morning persons.
Excellent excuse, isn't it?
The next time they tell you that you are lazy, that you wake up late:
'it's in my genes, dear, I can't do otherwise'
Finally, and with this I'll finish,
I would like this question to linger:
Is it then, that we're prepared for a world that no longer exists?
A world in which time is set from natural signals
by the day, by the night, by the seasons?
Has Edison stolen us the time?
Edison and his friends?
Most probably.
Most probably, if we measure biological rhythms in populations without access to electric power,
which is currenty under research,
they are very different.
How would time be in more natural circumstances?
How would our biological rhythms be? How would our sleep be...
...in the absence of artificial patterns like artificial light?
But actually, time waits for nobody,
for me either, and with this I consider better to end.
(Applause)