Brandon Luu began thinking about the body’s circadian machinery as a teenager, when he wasroutinely unable to fall asleep until late, sometimes well past 2 a.m. The schedule made mornings miserable and school harder.
But it also left him with a question: What happens when the body’s sense of time falls out of sync with the world around it?
Fifteen years later, Luu is exploring that question through one of psychiatry’s most common disorders: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Sleep problems have long been seen as a consequence of the condition. But now researchers are looking at the possibility that the relationship might run in reverse: that disruptions to circadian rhythms — the biological machinery governing when we sleep and wake — might be a cause.
