Phase shifting an exogenous variation in hamster activity by uniform daily rotation.

Abstract

It has been recently pointed out that the explanation of the long intractable biological clock phenomenon probably lies with-in the domain of interaction between organisms and rhythmic subtle geophysical fields. It was proposed that the rhythmic environmental field provides the well-known essentially temperature and chemical-factor independence of the temporal foundation for the rhythmically recurring, adaptive, genetic and environmentally modified, biological patterns. The patterns, in addition, include a useful feature of phase lability between the organismic and geophysical cycles. The foregoing hypothesis suggested that associations were effected within the living system between influences of subtle geophysical fluctuations such as the electromagnetic, on the one hand, and fluctuations in such overt ones as light, temperature, sound, and chemical factors, on the other . The subtle field variations were postulated not to elicit adaptive responses except as they might perhaps serve as token or predictive “stimuli” for biologically significant environmental events. Overt-factor variations, of course, include numerous ones having direct survival value for organisms. Many recent studies have disclosed that living systems are extraordinarily responsive to electromagnetic fields of closely the strength of the natural ambient ones , , , indeed organisms may display decreasing specific responsivenesses to fields both weaker and stronger. With the natural fluctuations within these fields activity rates of some organisms have been shown to be able to correlate either positively or negatively, indicating that these organisms have the ability to alter sign of response. Study of bean water uptake has indicated that this sign, whether + or —, may be determined or biased by other very weak ambient electromagnetic parameters, even ones of biological origin .