‘Superior Cognitive Function’: New Study Suggests Night Owls Have Sharper Minds Than Early Risers

A study of nearly 30,000 people showed that the minds of individuals who stay awake late function better than those who go to sleep early every night.

Knewz.com has learned that night owls enjoy mental benefits including enhanced memory, intelligence, reasoning, and what a study claimed was “superior cognitive function.”

Said study used data from the United Kingdom ’s Biobank, which is a resource containing information on health , and genetics, along with biological samples from 500,000 people.

The analysis scrutinized 26,000 individuals – the amount and quality of sleep they got, when each individual performed optimally, and how their brains functioned – to arrive at its conclusion.

Dr. Raha West from Imperial College London who led the program and authored the ensuing paper noted too much sleep could have negative effects.

“While understanding and working with your natural sleep tendencies is essential, it’s equally important to remember to get just enough sleep, not too long or too short,” West said.

She further noted that this was “crucial for keeping your brain healthy and functioning at its best.”

As a nod to the study's findings, sleeping late is associated with creativity—a connection that has been proven by the habits of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, James Joyce, Kanye West, and Lady Gaga, to name a few.

The habit of sleeping late, and then achieving during waking hours, is not limited to celebrity artists and singers, but also some of the most iconic leaders of modern times.

The longest-serving British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Winston Churchill who led England through World War II are examples of the latter.

Back in the United States , Barack Obama reportedly projected the same characteristics.

Be the latter as it may, not everybody is confident in the study’s outcome.

Jacqui Hanley who heads up a division of Alzheimer’s Research UK warned that “without a detailed picture of what is going on in the brain, we don’t know if being a ‘morning’ or ‘evening’ person affects memory and thinking, or if a decline in cognition is causing changes to sleeping patterns.”

Co-author of the counter-intuitive paper, Professor Daqing Ma, emphasized that sleep is important:

“We found that sleep duration has a direct effect on brain function, and we believe that proactively managing sleep patterns is really important for boosting, and safeguarding, the way our brains work.”

“We’d ideally like to see policy interventions to help sleep patterns improve in the general population,” Ma continued.

Sleep expert, Jessica Chelekis, noted that the study should merely be seen as a challenge to “stereotypes surrounding sleep.”

She went on to say that West and Ma’s findings had “important limitations” in that they did not factor in relevant times of day (that the cognitive tests were conducted) and that the study had no real bearing on “ Education attainment” via The Guardian .