Talk:Free-running sleep

Proposal

1 An article should be created on Matthew Fowler in philosophical anthropology.

2 Max Scheler's works should be seperated into those dealing with free-running sleep, and independantly refereced in "Further Reading" section.

More to come on both Scheler and Fowler, as well as additional authorities on free-running sleep.

06/20/07- Relation to Chronotherapy coming too. (Also Fowler's primary area of study.)

06/20/07 - "Scheler taking what can be described as a realistic view against Fowler’s impractical but ‘Utopian’ mindset." -- Not an expert but this is definitely not NPOV

07/25/07 - "Scheler taking what can be described as a realistic view against Fowler’s impractical but ‘Utopian’ mindset." I agree not an expert, but Fowler's views are purely free-running sleep in theory, only not able to be implemented.

Scheler's views are hence more 'realistic'.

Disambiguation, perhaps?

The term "Freerunning" is used in Chronobiology and the study of Circadian rhythm sleep disorders. There it is freerunning as opposed to entrained to nature's daily light/dark cycle. I don't really understand this article, but it seems to be about something else entirely. (?) Can both concepts be contained in the same article, or is disambiguation in order? Hordaland (talk) 21:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Changes

The two that I'll change in a minute are technical, so I thought I'd explain:

• Wikipedia articles are supposed to have an introduction (see WP:LEAD before getting into subsections. In this article, a reasonably effective and very simple way to do this is to lose the first heading.
• NLP is a technical designation. You could be NLP and have perfectly functional retina -- but, for example, with no functional nerve coming out the back, or with massive brain damage to the part of the brain that's responsible for receiving and processing visual information. It's better to use the technical designation than to describe parts of the condition. We can link to NLP if readers need more information.

Hope this helps, WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The word "perception" sounds like "visual perception" to me and probably to most, and you also mention "visual information" above. (Admittedly, your source also uses the word perception.) I'm no expert by formal education, but I've read a great deal about these things since my DSPS/DSPD diagnosis 4 years ago. Neither rods and cones, visual perception nor the optic nerve have much, if anything, to do with the entrainment of the "body clock". It's the small number of light-sensitive ganglion cells which do that via their direct connection with SCN/pineal gland through the retinohypothalamic tract. About half of totally blind people who perceive no light visually, are normally entrained by this other path. That's the distinction I was trying to suggest, or at least avoid conflicting.

(I'll now go look at NLP.) --Hordaland (talk) 00:57, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Ultimately, it doesn't matter: the source specifically named a proportion of people who have no light perception. The numbers might be quite different for the group you're describing.

Remember that Wikipedia isn't about what's True™; it's about what's verifiable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:51, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I probably wasn't clear, and hope my newest edit to the article is clearer. (As I saw it, the "group" I described above includes all normal mammals including humans.) Hordaland (talk) 09:11, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

No deal. This bit:

"The many blind people who do entrain to the 24-hour light/dark cycle have functioning retinas with operative non-visual light-sensitive cells which send their signals to the "circadian clock" via the retinohypothalamic tract, not the optic nerve."

may be true, but it needs a reference. Although this seems plausible, the sources I've seen make no such claims. It must have a source; Wikipedia is not a place for publishing our own pet theories.

The bit about not having eyes is not supported by the reference and can't be included in a way that makes the average reader believe that it is supported by the reference. (Non-human animals shouldn't be mentioned in a section that's specifically about humans anyway.)

And finally, the bit about the few who have been diagnosed was confusing. Do you mean to challenge the sex ratio, or simply to (perhaps unnecessarily) repeat the "small number of sighted individuals" information from the previous paragraph? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

It is true that those without eyes should not have been added to appear to have been in a ref where that isn’t mentioned. I have solved that by including have eyes with functioning retinas to the paragraph about blind people. (It should perhaps be obvious that people with bilateral enucleation don’t have retinas, but it’s often stressed in the literature than people without eyes have FRD.)

I have replaced citation needed with three references.

You are right that among the few who've been documented was redundant.

You wrote: Non-human animals shouldn't be mentioned in a section that's specifically about humans anyway, making it look as if I had done this in the article itself. I mentioned non-human animals only on the talk page, so that criticism is totally unreasonable.

While Wikipedia is not a place for publishing our own pet theories, as you point out, it is also a place where we are required to assume good faith. Your unnecessary testiness makes me feel accused of vandalism. I want correct as well as verifiable information on Wikipedia. Hordaland (talk) 03:11, 7 February 2008 (UTC)