I recently finished reading this book: The Scientific American Day in the Life of Your Brain. I highly recommend it if you're at all interested in how the brain works. It's accessible, covers the most interesting topics, and is packed with legitimate information. I thought the first chapter or so was a bit dry, and I considered putting it down; if you feel the same, keep at it and it will get better. (As you can see, most Amazon reviewers agree with me.)
Close to the end of the book, sleep and circadian rhythms were discussed at length, including in the context of disease. I was pretty fascinated to learn that Alzheimer's patients often have dramatically shifted circadian rhythms, such that they tend to be awake early in the morning. The authors emphasize that this is quite unfortunate, since this is when the drive to sleep will be strongest for everyone else - including the caretakers. This combination amounts to an increased likelihood that the patient will wander around, get hurt, and go unnoticed for some time.
Similarly, patients with schizophrenia have rhythms that are very shifted or may even have lost their rhythm altogether. This is a surprising find, since light - via our eyes - is the strongest time-keeper, and this kind of decoupling with the world has only been observed in (some) blind people.
Experiments have shown that some of the circadian misalignment can be fixed with light therapy in Alzheimer's patients, and surprisingly has led to improved cognition in some of them. (Light therapy is simply a regular exposure to light with a lux bright enough and at the right range of frequencies to influence the biological clock.) At the time of my source's publication, they were planning to test whether this would help schizophrenic patients as well.
Source: Kraft. Sci Am Mind, June/July 2007.
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