That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-The Pineal Gland

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss the Pineal Gland - a gland in your brain that is important for regulating sleep. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte. Are you feeling sleepy right now? Maybe it's because today I'm going to talk to you about the pineal gland. The pineal gland plays a key role in the sleep process. So I thought it's another gland that's worth talking about. The pineal gland is located in the brain. All right. It's basically at the back of the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the structure that connects the two halves of the

brain and the pineal gland is sort of tucked in right at the back of it. And it's a part of your endocrine system, and as we've talked about on this little sort of mini-series on glands, the whole point of the endocrine system is to release hormones into the bloodstream, and it allows your brain to control your body in a different way. So what does the pineal gland release? Well, melatonin. If you've ever had any trouble with sleep whatsoever, you're familiar with melatonin because you might even be taking melatonin. I know that I do every time I travel. But melatonin is released naturally into

your bloodstream. And it's basically what generates our circadian sleep cycle or our circadian rhythm. And the way it works is pretty straightforward. Your pineal gland is triggered by your sort of internal clock in addition to external sensory information. So in the later part of the day, when the sun goes down and we've had our meal, the pineal gland sort of reads the signs and says, all right, let's start releasing melatonin. And the whole point of melatonin is to prepare the body for sleep. And it does that through a bunch of biochemical processes, but I'm not going to get into that part of it because frankly, it's not my thing. But the key thing is, is that naturally the pineal gland is triggered by the brain,

external information in your internal clock, melatonin is released in the later part of the day and it prepares you for sleep. And as the night progresses, the pineal gland basically listens to the internal clock and listens to the state of the body and it stops producing melatonin. And this release of melatonin on a regular basis, and if you Google it, you'll see that it increases the amount of melatonin, and then it slowly fades away as the night progresses. And that's what sort of controls your sleep cycle.

This is why if you have trouble sleeping, you take melatonin as the belief. And the evidence suggests that it might help you sleep by adding more melatonin to the system, preparing the body for sleep more. This, of course, is why when you travel, you might get jet lag. It's not the only component of jet lag, but a part of jet lag is your sleep cycle being disrupted. And that's because your pineal gland is probably releasing melatonin in the middle of the day.

And at night, when you want to sleep, it's not releasing any at all until your body clock sorts itself out. Anyway, that's another neuroscience bite on the pineal gland. Hopefully you found that interesting. Don't forget to check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com, links to Etsy and Patreon. Send us ideas on threads or X at that neuroscience guy, and of course the podcast itself. Thank you so much for listening and please subscribe. My name is Olof Kregolsen and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.