Ring the Bell for Matins: Circadian Adaptation to Split Sleep by Cloistered Monks and Nuns
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Cloistered monks and nuns adhere to a 10-century-old strict schedule with a common zeitgeber of a night split by a 2- to 3-h-long Office (Matins). The authors evaluated how the circadian core body temperature rhythm and sleep adapt in cloistered monks and nuns in two monasteries. Five monks and five nuns following the split-sleep night schedule for 5 to 46 yrs without interruption and 10 controls underwent interviews, sleep scales, and physical examination and produced a week-long sleep diary and actigraphy, plus 48-h recordings of core body temperature. The circadian rhythm of temperature was described by partial Fourier time-series analysis (with 12- and 24-h harmonics). The temperature peak and trough values and clock times did not differ between groups. However, the temperature rhythm was biphasic in monks and nuns, with an early decrease at 19:39 ± 4:30 h (median ± 95% interval), plateau or rise of temperature at 22:35 ± 00:23 h (while asleep) lasting 296 ± 39 min, followed by a second decrease after the Matins Office, and a classical morning rise. Although they required alarm clocks to wake-up for Matins at midnight, the body temperature rise anticipated the nocturnal awakening by 85 ± 15 min. Compared to the controls, the monks and nuns had an earlier sleep onset (20:05 ± 00:59 h vs. 00:00 ± 00:54 h, median ± 95% confidence interval, p= .0001) and offset (06:27 ± 0:22 h, vs. 07:37 ± 0:33 h, p= .0001), as well as a shorter sleep time (6.5 ± 0.6 vs. 7.6 ± 0.7 h, p= .05). They reported difficulties with sleep latency, sleep duration, and daytime function, and more frequent hypnagogic hallucinations. In contrast to their daytime silence, they experienced conversations (and occasionally prayers) in dreams. The biphasic temperature profile in monks and nuns suggests the human clock adapts to and even anticipates nocturnal awakenings. It resembles the biphasic sleep and rhythm of healthy volunteers transferred to a short (10-h) photoperiod and provides a living glance into the sleep pattern of medieval time.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".