Cellular analysis of mammalian circadian rhythms

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The ability of animals to remember the time of day that significant conditions occur, then to anticipate the recurrence of those conditions on successive days, can have enormous adaptive significance. The daily activity of animals, including human beings, is driven in part by biological clocks that optimize the organism's physiology and behaviour with the changing conditions in the environment as well as within the organism itself. Our research is aimed at understanding how animals can remember the time, location and severity of significant happenings, then react to conditions that suggest to them that under similar conditions, similar consequences will occur. The well described hypothalamic circadian clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, is not necessary for the acquisition nor recall of these events. Our research examines the circadian oscillator, or oscillators, that are responsible for registering the time of day that significant events occur, then signalling to the organism, the likelihood that similar conditions are going to occur again, and at what time.