Chronobiological paradigms of mental life and clincial neurosciences
Poirel, C.; Ennaji, M.
L'Encephale 26(5): 57-66
2000
ISSN/ISBN: 0013-7006 PMID: 11192805 Document Number: 521553
Circadian fluctuations of normal and abnormal behavioural processes have been classically reported from statistically validated chronograms (averaged displays of data as a function of time). Going more deeply into the research with rhythmometric investigations reveals that the temporal organization of psychophysiological functions involving several oscillatory systems may compose possible circadian paradigms of brain integration and pathological chronorisk for clinical neuroscience (seizure susceptibility for epilepsy and related states, brain circulatory disturbances, stress-related events, emotional or affective manifestations, and psychosomatic disorders). Rhythmometrically analyzed, the temporal fluctuations of behavioural events tend to indicate that cerebral integrations are circadian, circaseptidian or infradian stage-dependent processes whose chronobiologic characteristics are possibly predictable on the basis of mathematical models. More generally, the present study reveals that: 1) several neurological or psychiatric disorders are directly or indirectly concerned with chronobiologic processes, and that 2) cerebral and behavioural time variations can be detected and described in neurology and psychiatry as algorithmically-formulatable recurring psychophysiological changes with a waveform validated by inferential statistical computer methods. Such rhythmometric procedures applied to neurological or psychiatric events suggest also the development of new epistemological concepts in the fields of comparative psychophysiology and theoretical neuroscience.