Abstract
This chapter presents a general review of biological rhythm research, with emphasis on neurological and behavioral perspectives. It discusses a broad range of frequencies from the 1000 cycles per second signal frequency in nerve cells to diurnal, lunar, seasonal, and even longer periodicities, including such variables as cerebral potentials, motor and mental performance, optical illusions, perception, memory, mood, and the periodic diseases. It also describes the influence of morphological system size and mental disturbances on such functions and presents a comparison of rhythms with and without external correlates, including the widely studied diurnal and circadian forms. The chapter focuses on the feedback mechanisms that generate these rhythms, with examples from mechanics and neurology, including disturbances caused by interference with the feedback. It also describes the energy aspect of biological rhythms. As modern literature on biological rhythms is highly theoretical, the chapter describes some physical and mathematical models, notably the pendulum and the sine curve. It also explains the statistical treatment of time series. This involves special problems such as short records and nonequidistant sampling in time. The chapter presents a comparison of harmonic analysis and multiple regression.
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