Do Night Owls Get the Best from Their Brains?

“Do we all have to be Early Birds?” O Youn-hee, of The Korea Herald, asks. Park Myoung, an office worker, “gets nervous” when others discuss Saisho’s bestselling book, Let’s Become a Morning Person. Park laments, “It seems society demands all employees to transform themselves into morning people,” since colleagues arrived for work one or two hours early to succeed in a very competitive company. Park describes herself as a night person who usually goes to bed at 2 a.m. “I just can’t be an early bird,” Park exclaims. If you're a night owl, like Park, are you actually getting the best from your brain?

Interestingly, recent research shows that the human brain functions best in the evening. Now that was a surprise to me... You? The time of day influences your brain’s ability to learn—and the human brain learns more effectively in the evening, according to findings of Martin Sale and Colleagues at the University of Adelaide.

Another recent Harvard Medical School study finds that people who slept after learning new information at 9:00 pm performed best, successfully recalling more words when tested. This compares to people who learned the new information in the morning. It would be interesting to test someone at 12:00 am to see how the results look.

Want to identify your body clock? Check it out on this Psychology Today Quiz which includes an assessment of results. See where you stand in all of this.

It's clear that Night Owls may benefit by studying in the evening, but they'd still need plenty of sleep. Hmm... our Early Bird world poses a problem... So...

If your Circadian rhythm favors evening hours like Park, what's your secret to successfully navigating in a world set up for Early Birds?

Flickr image by srcohiba.