After the course study phase, I still keep the habit of Stay Up Late and Get Up Late. I was trying to shift to an Early Bird pattern - failed multiple times. There is a reason for that ...
News from s.a.
From the September 2009 Scientific American Mind
Early Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late
By Siri Carpenter
Early birds may get the best worms—or at least the best garage sale deals—but they also tire out more quickly than night owls do. In a new study researchers Christina Schmidt and Philippe Peigneux, both at the University of Liège in Belgium, and their colleagues first asked 16 extreme early risers and 15 extreme night owls to spend a week following their natural sleep schedule. Then subjects spent two nights in a sleep lab, where they again followed their preferred sleep patterns and underwent cognitive testing twice daily while in a functional MRI scanner.
An hour and a half after waking, early birds and night owls were equally alert and showed no difference in attention-related brain activity. But after being awake for 10 and a half hours, night owls had grown more alert, performing better on a reaction-time task requiring sustained attention and showing increased activity in brain areas linked to attention. More important, these regions included the suprachiasmatic area, which is home to the body’s circadian clock. This area sends signals to boost alertness as the pressure to sleep mounts. Unlike night owls, early risers didn’t get this late-day lift. Peigneux says faster activation of sleep pressure appears to prevent early birds from fully benefiting from the circadian signal, as evening types do.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Early Risers Crash Faster."
The original research article was published couple months ago on Science.
Science. 2009 Apr 24;324(5926):516-9.
Homeostatic sleep pressure and responses to sustained attention in the suprachiasmatic area.
Schmidt C, Collette F, Leclercq Y, Sterpenich V, Vandewalle G, Berthomier P, Berthomier C, Phillips C, Tinguely G, Darsaud A, Gais S, Schabus M, Desseilles M, Dang-Vu TT, Salmon E, Balteau E, Degueldre C, Luxen A, Maquet P, Cajochen C, Peigneux P.
Cyclotron Research Centre, University of Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium. Christina.Schmidt@ulg.ac.be
Throughout the day, cognitive performance is under the combined influence of circadian processes and homeostatic sleep pressure. Some people perform best in the morning, whereas others are more alert in the evening. These chronotypes provide a unique way to study the effects of sleep-wake regulation on the cerebral mechanisms supporting cognition. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in extreme chronotypes, we found that maintaining attention in the evening was associated with higher activity in evening than morning chronotypes in a region of the locus coeruleus and in a suprachiasmatic area (SCA) including the circadian master clock. Activity in the SCA decreased with increasing homeostatic sleep pressure. This result shows the direct influence of the homeostatic and circadian interaction on the neural activity underpinning human behavior.
"During the evening fMRI session, evening types were less sleepy (P < 0.05) (Fig. 2B) (16) and tended to perform faster than morning types (overall median reaction times (RTs) (P = 0.06) (Fig. 2C) (16). No significant group differences in subjective sleepiness and sustained attention performance were observed for the morning session [all P values $gt; 0.5 (16)]."
"In the frontal derivation, known to be most sensitive to variations in homeostatic sleep pressure (28), relative SWA was higher in morning than evening types at the beginning of the night (Fig. 3B) (P < 0.05) (16). SWA dissipation in the course of the night was also faster in morning than evening types (Fig. 3B) (P < 0.05) (16) resulting in similar SWAlevels at the end of the night for both chronotypes (P > 0.5) (Fig. 3B) (16)."
It is a heavy MRI paper. My take is different from the writer of s.a. news. I think the original paper was outlining a fact - "early bird or night owl, your choice".
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