The Sleep Disorders Channel is supported through educational grants from Alkermes and Takeda.
VJNeurology is an independent medical education platform. Channel supporters have no influence over the production of content.
EAN 2025 | Modern environmental pressures and their impact on human sleep and chronotype evolution
Ambra Stefani, MD, PhD, Medical University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria, comments on the changes in sleep and chronotype patterns that have evolved due to modern environmental pressures. Dr Stefani notes the contrast between pre- and post-industrial societies, with the current society having several factors that disrupt natural sleep patterns. This interview took place at the 11th Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN 2025) in Helsinki, Finland.
These works are owned by Magdalen Medical Publishing (MMP) and are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All rights are reserved.
Transcript
So this is a very interesting aspect because if we try to go back and understand how pre-industrial society, which lived in a much closer relationship with the natural environment, and were more dependent on the natural environment, we can see that the chronotypes were more dependent on sunrise and sunset times, and that also is probably the reason for having different chronotypes, an evolutionary reason, as there are still some hunter-gatherer communities in the world, for example in Africa and South America, and studying this population we can see that different chronotypes are present, and this probably during the night, as the community sleeping group helps, having almost all the time...
So this is a very interesting aspect because if we try to go back and understand how pre-industrial society, which lived in a much closer relationship with the natural environment, and were more dependent on the natural environment, we can see that the chronotypes were more dependent on sunrise and sunset times, and that also is probably the reason for having different chronotypes, an evolutionary reason, as there are still some hunter-gatherer communities in the world, for example in Africa and South America, and studying this population we can see that different chronotypes are present, and this probably during the night, as the community sleeping group helps, having almost all the time. According to studies, it seems that about 99.8% of the time there is at least one person awake throughout their night, just because they sleep at different times. And chronotypes are also related to age, so they change with aging, so having different age groups within the community is also helpful. So probably for defense reasons and alertness and the ability to respond to danger during the night, this is probably the reason why we have different chronotypes. In the current society, of course, we have completely different kinds of environmental pressures. We have too much exposure to light, we have light pollution outdoors, indoors. We also just use a lot of screen time also in the evening. There is noise pollution as well, and also we live in a 24-7 society, so there is a constant offer of anything we want to do any time of the day, actually, and also a lot of demands which lead to pressure, and this is also not helping healthy sleep, so it’s completely different environment and it’s not hard to pass. Of course, this was not just a short passage from pre-industrial to the current society, which is post-industrial, we went to the industrial society, but still, these changes in our technological community have a huge impact on sleep and chronotypes.
This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.
Read more...
Disclosures
Advisory Board: Takeda.
