Word: pineal gland
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...Persuading a teenager to go to bed and get up on a reasonable schedule is another matter entirely. This kind of decision making has less to do with the frontal lobe than with the pineal gland at the base of the brain. As nighttime approaches and daylight recedes, the pineal gland produces melatonin, a chemical that signals the body to begin shutting down for sleep. Studies by Mary Carskadon at Brown University have shown that it takes longer for melatonin levels to rise in teenagers than in younger kids or in adults, regardless of exposure to light or stimulating activities...
...With age, the cells in the hypothalamus become less active. It's a situation that is made worse by the fact that the elderly tend to spend less time outdoors in the sunlight, which increases melatonin production in the pineal gland, causing sleep and mood disturbances. In earlier studies, Van Someren showed that Alzheimer's patients living in homes who preferred darker rooms were the most restless during the night. Combined with this study's findings, he now believes that the inactivity of these biological-clock cells can be reversed...
...WANTS TO BELIEVE IN THE health benefits of melatonin more than Fred Turek. A neurobiologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, Turek has devoted two decades of his life to studying this naturally occurring substance produced by the pineal gland. He feels certain that it functions as the body's own safe and highly effective sleeping potion. But lately Turek can't shake the feeling that the world has gone melatonin mad. Based on the flimsiest scientific evidence, the subject of his research is now being trumpeted in books and magazines and on television as a cure for everything from...
Israeli scientists have found that giving elderly insomniacs melatonin -- a hormone produced in the human pineal gland, which regulates sleep cycles -- dramatically improves their chances of getting to sleep. It also seems to work for people whose insomnia is caused by Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders...
...mail came the year's most original movie tie-in: a red plastic visor with a 4-in. protruding, well, sort of asparagus stalk. "Fun Facts and Myths About the Pineal Gland (The Gland of the '80s)" reads the press release. "Mad Doctor Edward Pretorious' invention stimulates the pineal gland and causes it to protrude and take on a personality of its own -- much like your official From Beyond Pineal Gland Visor . . . Wear it anywhere: the ballpark, parties, the shower (it's waterproof...