Sleep patterns. Nature or Nurture?

[ignoramus]

For some crazy reason, it just popped into my head.
You know in ST TNG, where we see the young ones being looked after, like kindergarten, (obviously the voyage is multigenerational as they allow fornicating).
These new baby humans have never seen or synced with earth days/nights. Out the window is permanent black with the odd celestial object.

How would their body/mind react to that? Does the mind set an arbitrary sleep cycle and normalises to that through repetition?
Or is there an internal hard wired clock somewhere in the dna which always knows when the body should be naturally asleep, based on the earth cycle?
We are humans, therefore all our (at least primate) evolution has been in the presence of the earth day/night cycle.

I suppose the same can be said for those living long periods on the space station? No adverse effects?

[robvalue]

I remember hearing somewhere that we originally could have slept every other day (our species or our ancestors), but we ended up settling into a daily routine instead.

No idea where that came from or how reliable it is.

[ignoramus]

I can't see any evolutionary benefit to that one though Rob? Was it theorised in a doco or something?
Be aware and awake during the day seems the most beneficial?

[robvalue]

I really can't remember. It's possible it was someone talking crap. I'm trying to look it up and I can't find anything.

It does sound very odd, yeah.

[Homeless Nutter]

I can't see any evolutionary benefit to that one though Rob?  Was it theorised in a doco or something?
Be aware and awake during the day seems the most beneficial?

The myth of the eight-hour sleep

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.

His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.

Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".

[Homeless Nutter]

Human Hibernation

At the beginning of the 19th century, France was four-fifths rural. Almost a third of these lived in hamlets of fewer than 35 people. Without an industrial revolution to transform its roads, railways and canals, travelling in ‘la France profonde’ was as exotic as a trip to the lands of Tartary. In the years after the revolution of 1789, reports came back of almost unimaginably primitive lifestyles.

The peasant’s year was divided into two seasons: five months of labour, where 99% of the work was done and seven months of winter. As money was practically unknown in rural France until the late 19th century, there was little motivation to do anything other than conserve energy. It seems in many places, whole families just took to their beds, snug under their hayloft, with a supply of dried and preserved food and their animals in the next room to keep them warm. If anyone died, the corpse was stored on the roof and buried when the weather got warmer.[...]

http://qi.com/infocloud/hibernation

[robvalue]

I could do with some of that right now.

[Gawdzilla]

For reasons not germane to the topic I started going to bed before 8 pm and getting up at 4 am a few years ago. I kept that habit until a few months ago. Then I decided to go back to a more rational schedule. It's taken me four months to train my body to stay up "late" and get up "late", but changing sleep habits can be done, for a lot of people. Professional insomniacs have my sympathy.

[Spirian]

Circadian rhythm must be considered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm

[vorlon13]

On Star Trek, I'm sure the Dr. Beverley has a hypospray to establish any circadian rhythm desired.

No matter what time of day the Borg attack, everyone is always bright and perky. It has to be the meds.