Focus: Clocks and Cycles: Exceptional Entrainment of Circadian Activity Rhythms With Manipulations of Rhythm Waveform in Male Syrian Hamsters

The activity/rest rhythm of mammals reflects the output of an endogenous circadian oscillator entrained to the solar day by light. Despite detailed understanding of the neural and molecular bases of mammalian rhythms, we still lack practical tools for achieving rapid and flexible adjustment of clocks to accommodate shift-work, trans-meridian jet travel, or space exploration. Efforts to adapt clocks have focused on resetting the phase of an otherwise unaltered circadian clock. Departing from this tradition, recent work has demonstrated that bifurcation of circadian waveform in mice facilitates entrainment to extremely long and short zeitgeber periods. Here we evaluate the formal nature of entrainment to extreme non-24 h days in male Syrian hamsters. Wheel-running rhythms were first bifurcated into a 24 h rest/activity/rest/activity cycle according to established methods. Thereafter the 24 h lighting cycle was incrementally adjusted over several weeks to 30 h or to 18 h. Almost without exception, wheel-running rhythms of hamsters in gradually lengthened or shortened zeitgebers remained synchronized with the lighting cycle, with greater temporal precision observed in the former condition. Data from animals transferred abruptly from 24 h days to long or short cycles suggested that gradual adaptation facilitates but is not necessary for successful behavioral entrainment. The unprecedented behavioral adaptation following waveform bifurcation reveals a latent plasticity in mammalian circadian systems that can be realized in the absence of pharmacological or genetic manipulations. Oscillator interactions underlying circadian waveform manipulation, thus, represent a tractable target for understanding and enhancing circadian rhythm resetting