Biological Rhythms: In Life, Timing Really is Everything
Wednesday, April 19, 2023
4:00 PM-5:30 PM
BIOMED Seminar
Title:
Biological Rhythms: In Life, Timing Really is Everything
Speaker:
Donald L. McEachron, PhD
Teaching Professor
Coordinator, Academic Assessment and Quality Improvement
School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Drexel University
Details:
All in due time’; ‘A stitch in time saves nine’; ‘It’s only a matter of time’; ‘Time heals all wounds’; ‘Timing is everything’. Humans live in a society dominated by time and timing. The technology of time is everywhere from the cell phone in your pocket to the computer on your desk to the clock on the wall. As I stand in my kitchen, there is a clock glowing on my microwave oven, another clock displaying a slightly different time on my stove (I can never quite get those two clocks synchronized for some reason), and yet a third digital clock hanging on the wall. This third clock is wirelessly linked to the United States Atomic clock, so I know at least one clock in the kitchen is accurate (it also supplies the current date, so I really know what time it is). Everywhere you turn, there is yet another reminder of what time it is - often leading to a sense of panic because there is, after all, never enough time. [Quoted from McEachron, D.L. (2012). Chronobioengineering, Morgan and Claypool.]
Ironically, all of this technology appears to have had the effect of obscuring a fundamental fact of living systems - that they are dominated by cycles, rhythms and oscillations. These rhythms range from hundreds of Hertz in neural oscillations to multi-year population cycles in ecological systems. At every level, in every process, rhythms are an essential element of adaptive function. In this talk, I hope to introduce rhythms as a phenomenon and highlight the impact of selected rhythms, primarily daily or circadian rhythms, on physiology and behavior. And so doing, I hope to increase the awareness of the importance of rhythms and cycles and how modern technology can either take advantage of such cycles for the enhancement of human health and well-being or can disrupt these cycles with devastating consequences.
Biosketch:
Donald L. McEachron, PhD, currently holds the position of Teaching Professor and currently serves as the Coordinator for Academic Assessment and Quality Improvement for the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems at Drexel University. Dr. McEachron has a BA in Behavioral Genetics from the University of California at Berkeley and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of California at San Diego. In December 2006, he completed an MS in Information Science at Drexel.
Dr. McEachron has worked extensively in the areas of imaging, editing three monographs on imaging applications in biomedicine, as well as numerous papers and presentations. His primary biomedical research, however, has focused on chronobiology, biological rhythms, and human performance engineering. Dr. McEachron's most recent book is titled, "Chronobioengineering: An Introduction to Biological Rhythms with Applications, Volume 1," published by Morgan-Claypool, as part of the Synthesis Lectures series on biomedical engineering.
In addition to his work at Drexel, Dr. McEachron has served as Chair of the Engineering in Biology and Medicine Society (EBMS), Philadelphia Chapter, IEEE Philadelphia Section. He is also a Fellow and Founding Member of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society. His work in chronobiology led to him being selected by the organization Disruptive Women in Health Care as their January Man of the Month in 2015.
Contact Information
Lisa Williams
ltw22@drexel.edu