Quo vadis basic and clinical chronobiology: promise for health maintenance.

Chronobiology is the eminently interdisciplinary science of interactions in time among metabolic, hormonal, and neuronal networks. It involves anatomy, biochemistry, microbiology, physiology, and pharmacology, at the molecular, intracellular, intercellular, and still higher levels of organization. The compounds coordinating a time structure--proteins, steroids, and amino-acid derivatives--provide for the scheduling of interactions among membrane, cytoplasmic, and nuclear events in a network involving rhythmic enzyme reactions and other intracellular mechanisms. The integrated temporal features of the processes of induction, repression, transcription, and translation of gene expression remain to be mapped in relation to the available framework, consisting of the sequences of phospholipid and RNA labeling, DNA formation, and mitosis, to delineate a circadian cell cycle upon which further hormonal and neural coordination acts (Halberg et al., 1959a,b, 1979a). There is a need for communication over temporal as well as spatial distances among different specialized structures devoted, in individuals, to metabolism, growth, reproduction, and the ability to adjust, and, in species, to the capacity to adapt. For a better understanding at all levels of behavior in its broader sense of organization in time, chronobiology requires familiarity with temporal aspects of metabolism, hormones, and neurons. In other words, broadly trained, full-time "general practitioners" of a chronobiology in its own right are needed.

Effects of locus of control on perceived hospital environment.

Re-examined how psychiatric patients' perception by their treatment setting was related to locus of control, unconfounded by variations in treatment setting, differences in pathology, or length of hospitalization. Forty male patients were drawn from the general psychiatric' population of Norwich Hospital. They were administered the Rotter I-E Scale, Ward Atmosphere and Ward Initiative Scales. In contrast to reports found in the literature, the results of the study indicated that internally oriented patients preferred a well-ordered, organized treatment setting in which therapeutic objectives and treatment procedures were defined clearly. A most important determinant of the perception of the treatment setting appeared to be the Internals' personal involvement in the therapeutic functioning of the unit. Externals felt that the level of personal participation in the operation of the unit should be minimal and that treatment plans and procedures should be formulated by professional staff and not by their peers.