The Molecular-Genetic-Cellular Level -- The Ultradian Clock (~40 min) in Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) -- ENOX Proteins, Copper Hexahydrate-Based Ultradian Oscillators of the Cells’ Biological Clock -- Self-Organized Intracellular Ultradian Rhythms Provide Direct Cell-Cell Communication -- Phosphorylation Dynamics in Mammalian Cells -- Is There a Mitochondrial Clock? -- Invertebrate Systems -- Ultradian and Circadian Rhythms: Experiments and Models -- Ultradian Lovesong Rhythms in Drosophila -- Mid-range Ultradian Rhythms in Drosophila and the Circadian Clock Problem -- Tidal Rhythms -- The Neuroendocrineal and Developmental Level -- Pulsatile Hormone Secretion: Mechanisms, Significance and Evaluation -- Ultradian Rhythms as the Dynamic Signature of Life -- The Mammalian Circadian Timekeeping System -- Ultradian and Circadian Rhythms in Human Experience -- Ultradian Cognitive Performance Rhythms During Sleep Deprivation -- High Frequency EEG and Its Relationship to Cognitive Function -- Total Sleep Deprivation and Cognitive Performance: The Case for Multiple Sources of Variance -- Open Questions on Mind, Genes, Consciousness, and Behavior: The Circadian and Ultradian Rhythms of Art, Beauty, and Truth in Creativity -- Genes, Sleep and Dreams -- Epilogue: A New Vision of Life.

Ultradian rhythms play an essential part at all levels of biological organization, providing timekeeping for intracellular processes, playing various roles in intracellular signalling systems and underpinning coherent behaviour in tissues and organs. They are crucial to endocrine and neural performance and in psychobiology. This book brings together the evidence for these findings. In lower eukaryotes short-period rhythms (period 30-70 min) are coupled to an ultradian clock which serves as a central timekeeper. In metazoans, similar rhythms are necessary for intercell communications, and temporal coupling for the coordination of integrated functions of tissues and organs to provide "homeodynamics" of the whole organism. Electrical, endocrine and behavioural rhythms characterize both wakefulness and sleep; pathologically disordered states give rise to dynamic diseases. Chapters on human movements, sleep, attention span and alertness indicate the broad span of this subject. A continuum can now be traced from the molecular genetic, through the cellular and neuroendocrine to the behavioural and psychosocial levels. Many of the results presented in this book are recent and novel, and have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of health and disease. Our first book (published 15 years ago) ended with " Epilogue :The Unification Hypothesis of Chronobiology-Psychobiology from Molecule to Mind". In retrospect we can now recognise how this epilogue was a prescient vision of what is now the cutting edge of epigenetics, bioinformatics, systems biology, neuroscience, and the new sciences of consciousness that are the foundation for the emerging vision of life and philosophy in our current era. Each of the four parts of this book are successive iterations towards this new integration of the life sciences from molecule to mind and spirit in the emergent ethos of the future.