In recent years, different sleep schedules have become a part of our society. Going to bed early in the night and waking up early in the morning is not a norm anymore. To inculcate different sleep patterns into the regular language, people have decided to categorize themselves into morning-person or evening-person. Morning people, as the name suggests, are the ones who wake up early and are most energetic during the days. In contrast, evening people are the ones that sleep in the day and are most productive during the nighttime. Majority of the population of the world suggests that we should sleep early and wake early in the morning. So, do morning people actually have better brain function and connections than evening people?

To get some insight into this question, a group of neuroscientists from Jagiellonian University did a research on 29 extremely morning-type and 34 evening-type participants. All the participants were young and healthy. They also recognized the fact that there are 24-hour fluctuations in human body, which are called circadian rhythms. These are the biological clocks that everyone has. Due to this evolutionary biological clock, people’s performance, alertness, and biological functions vary throughout the 24-hour time period. The researchers used the fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) technique to measure brain activity in different brain areas in both morning and evening-type participants. In this technique, the energies released by the pigment in our blood are detected by the scanner that is put on our head. It tells where the activity is taking place in the brain.

After recording the data and analyzing it, the researchers found that in the morning, all the participants had more functional connectivity in the brain areas. This means, people showed higher alertness, better performance, and better connections in different brain areas in the morning time. This is because the biological clocks of our brains are universal in nature. Therefore, it follows the same trend among all the humans. For example: We all have high alertness in the morning, and low alertness at night. Also, we react to our environment faster in the morning and slower at night. This is because the connections within the regions of our brain area called thalamus are stronger in the morning. The thalamus combines information received from our eyes, ears, and other senses. Our parents were, in fact, right to suggest us to sleep early and wake up early. Another interesting finding by the researchers was that there were no differences found in the brains of morning-type and evening-type people. So, even if being a “night owl” does not change connectivity among the brain regions, it still can impact the person’s life because as the research suggests, the brain is most efficient during the morning and a night-person does not get to take the advantage of it because they are off to sleep at that time.

These findings can incite motivation among people who are struggling with changing their sleeping habits. Even the extreme evening-type people are never really helpless because they can always change their lifestyle and wake up early if they want to work when they are at their best. Hence, there is still something that people can do to change their sleep patterns so that they can be awake during the morning and be most productive, which is indeed the recipe to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Reference:

Fafrowicz, M., Bohaterewicz, B., Ceglarek, A., Cichocka, M., Lewandowska, K., Sikora-Wachowicz, B., . . . Marek, T. (2019, August 05). Beyond the Low Frequency Fluctuations: Morning and Evening Differences in Human Brain. Retrieved October 17, 2020, from https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00288