Light O'Clock (Season 3)

Episode 2: City lights, country nights – Circadian rhythms in urban and rural life

Host: Carolina Guidolin | Guest: Luísa Klaus Pilz

DOI: 10.17617/4awr-1768 | License: CC-BY

How does life in cities versus rural areas shape our circadian rhythms? How does access to electricity — or the lack of it — impact sleep timing? And what happens to our circadian rhythms when we move from an urban setting to camping outside?

Our guest Luísa Klaus Pilz (Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin) comments on field studies carried out when she was a PhD student and postdoc at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Laboratório de Cronobiologia e Sono - HCPA/UFRGS).

Links and resources related to the episode’s content

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-29494-4

• https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2021.773969/full

• https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31522-6

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(00:44) Questions from a Londoner

(03:07) Guest introduction

(03:57) Why care about rural vs urban light?

(07:28) Sleep changes with urbanization

(09:40) The effects of electricity and artificial light

(10:49) Quilombola communities

(16:38) Metabolic health differences

(20:53) Rural occupations and light exposure

(24:00) Other differences in behaviour

(25:22) Adapting to a different environment

(28:27) Future research questions

(31:49) Outro