
Night owls have more grey matter in their brains than early birds - dmitriy_ko
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-night-owls-grey-brains-early.html
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DaiPlusPlus
I’m certifiably a night-owl and definitely not a morning-person (to the point
where I employ licensed caregivers to yell at me in the morning - my
psychologist recommended it!) - but I wouldn’t attribute it in any way to
being “social” - for some reason I just find it significantly easier to be
focused, motivated, and productive after 6pm than any time before.

I used to attribute it to my horrible procrastination and how only in the
night before a school or uni homework deadline I’d crank something out out of
desperation, but it’s still an ongoing habit with my current day-job (er...
night-job?) where deadlines aren’t really a thing (I love my boss) but I still
feel most-productive in the evenings.

I’m ASD+ADHD[1] too - and I see similar things with other people I know with
similar diagnoses. I believe they’re all related.

[1]: I really dislike the “ADHD” label because I’m not hyperactive in any way
- or resemble stereotypical symptoms - if I could rename whatever it is I’ve
got I’d call it “Motivation deficit” or similar.

~~~
brailsafe
I fit the same attributes. ADHD (with hyperactivity in this case) and can't
really get anything done before 8pm usually. There isn't a force I've found
that will actually wake me up and get me to start my day, and I naturally slip
into a 4-6am bedtime to 3pm wake time. Lost my job recently in large part
because of this (not the first time). I'm kind of lost atm for the nth time
and probably burned out. Could you elaborate or your circumstances or whatever
you care to? Any misc advice is always welcome as well.

Edit: Read the rest of your replies about caregivers

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hoorayimhelping
Diagnosed with ADHD 10+ years ago in my 20s. Can be very impulsive in behavior
and hyperactive when it's bad. Since about 28 or 29, I flipped from being a
night owl to being a morning person. I usually wake up between 5 and 6,
depending on when I went to bed the night before. Haven't used an alarm in
about 8 or 9 years. I just wake up when I'm done sleeping.

I started lifting weights 2-3 times a week and I changed my diet from being
carb-based to being protein based. In my 20s, I'd eat a bowl or two of
spaghetti, or a pizza for a meal. Now, a meal is generally a protein source, a
carb source, and a lot of vegetables (e.g. chicken and rice and a lot of kale,
or steak and potatoes and a lot of broccoli). I think the most significant
change was the diet, because in periods when I was injured or couldn't lift
weights, I still sleep well.

I also started getting a bit more on a schedule. Eating breakfast between 7:30
and 8:30, lunch between 12:00 and 1:30, and dinner around 7:30, etc. has
really helped my focus and attention and poise. It feels like the volume is
turned down on the ADHD and it's much easier to remain calm and in control
throughout the day.

Edit: I think I also have a mindset about this. I refuse to give myself
permission to use ADHD as an excuse for not being the person I want to be. I
think the thing I'm most scared of is looking back on my life with regret at
the things I failed to do because I used some diagnosis as an excuse to not
put in the work necessary to be the person I wanted to.

~~~
brailsafe
Great to hear you managed to put yourself in a good place. I'm 28 now,
diagnosed last year (in so much as I was prescribed medication based on an
official evaluation). These are pretty common sentiments from people who have
managed to wrangle their lives, and I'd say that I've already adopted them for
the most part. A big contributor to why I lost my job was that I didn't have
anything else to do, and I couldn't just get up and do the job that wasn't
that stimulating and have that be the day. I'm a skateboarder, I go to the
gym, I hike, and do some calisthenics, my diet is mostly fruits and proteins,
but aside from not eating 1kg of pasta in one sitting, I haven't seen any
profound changes. These are all things that everyone should do, but most
people also wake up on time for work. So while these are important aspects of
your life now, what was the path you adopted that helped you get there?

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seesawtron
It is to be noted that they found "evening types" people had greater grey
matter volume in an area of the brain called the precuneus, NOT in the whole
brain.

Also it is not clear whether more grey matter makes the individuals "evening
types" or the other way around. This study does not discuss that. So jumping
to theories about personality traits seems quite far fetched.

Evening types were younger than morning types in their sample of studied
people. It is known that there is a decrease in grey matter volume between
adulthood and old age, whereas white matter volume was found to increase from
age 19-40, and decline after this age (Bartzokis et al.). So it is not
surprising that their data showed evening types (younger people) had higher
grey matter than morning types (older people).

~~~
adjkant
All of this seems fair, so an interesting note off of this:

I find the causality/correlative arrow here interesting as no matter the
direction, there is interesting insight.

~~~
seesawtron
That would be interesting but I am not sure if this study is solid to even
show existence of this arrow. That assumes that there are no confounding
variables but just a one directional arrow either way. However several
confounding variables likely exist (maybe age, maybe more things we haven't
thought about) that could give rise to reduction in gray matter, change in
sleeping patterns, so on and so forth.

Since this is not a behavioral study where experimentalists can actually
control for confounding factors (like in animal studies), this
correlation/causation arrow likely is a spurious observable effect. An ideal
experiment would involve studying say lab animals in a controlled setting
where "everything else being equal" one group sleeps during day and other
during night and then observe their gray matter. Perhaps similar studies
already exist but this paper doesn't refer to anything.

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undersuit
I thought it was a study about birds and I was confused why they were trying
to apply all these human traits in the article. I then came over here and
downvoted two commentors for also confusingly talking about birds.

I much prefer the original title of the study: Diurnal Preference and Grey
Matter Volume in a Large Population of Older Adults: Data from the UK Biobank

~~~
michaelcampbell
The (IMO) bizarre re-titling that this site does boggles me.

[https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/](https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/)

~~~
lucb1e
That's an interesting page. Perhaps off-topic, but I'm never sure where meta
_can_ be discussed so I guess a subthread of a subthread might be reasonably
out of the way / collapsable.

Some of the changes are clearly good: "Article: Learning how to learn (with 20
study references)" was changed into "Learning how to learn" which is indeed
what it's about (the article prefix is useless, the "with 20 references"
sounds a bit like WikiHow's "with pictures!"). The "google relentlessly
continues to attack on X" title was changed to just "google add experimental
flag to do X" to make it more objective, also good.

But those are the minority: another titles was first edited to change "54"
into "fifty four" (how's that useful?) and then edited again to omit the
number altogether (how is that more helpful to the reader?). The "CDC denies
tribes" title was changed to not mention the CDC at all, now the tribes are
simply "thwarted" (hiding info, why? AFAICT nobody else was involved in the
thwarting). The interview date "May 2020" was removed (helpful how?). "My
daughter and I made a site to explore the ~3.5M photos from the ISS" was
edited to remove the 3.5M number (just why?)...

Not even the author can edit a title iirc, this is all needless moderation at
best or harmful at worst.

~~~
fphhotchips
How many of those 'useless' edits were changing the title back to whatever the
actual page title was? Keep in mind that sometimes site owners change or A/B
test page titles.

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bondolo
Not all of it is without choice. I used to be a night owl. I woke around 10am,
worked from 11am until 1am or sometimes later. The invariant was that I
generally slept between 9-10 hours.

I also suffered from seasonal affective disorder and winter time depression
with short days in Canada. To help with this I started spending time outside
during the early part of the day and generally ate my lunch outside if
possible. This helped somewhat. This switch to prioritizing sunlight exposure
also made me consider that sleeping while the sun was up and working in the
dark was a strange choice.

For more than the last 25 years I've intentionally time shifted to ensure that
I don't waste daylight hours sleeping. If I'd follow my natural sleep rhythms
I'd almost surely drift later, I'd we waking several hours after sunrise and
working in to the evening. Even though I have to have some discipline about
using an alarm clock and only allowing myself 1 day a week to wake naturally
it is not actually that hard because I do it consistently. I could also easily
stay up late one night, but getting up at the same time every day makes
staying up harder.

My intentional time shifting isn't that dramatic of a "hacking" of my natural
inclination. It has made a difference with seasonal depression and I've found
that social activity works better with a time schedule aligned to daylight
hours. It is easy to read a study like this and conclude that personal choice
plays no part in determining your "fate". You have some flexibility and choice
to do what you need to do. An inclination is not an outcome.

~~~
Godel_unicode
Your experience is not the same as many other people's. There are tons of
cases of people who perform markedly worse when they have to get up earlier,
even if they're getting enough sleep.

This is a choice for some people. It's not for others.

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Tarsul
so they say that having little grey matter (like early birds) correlates with
"empathy, agreeableness and cooperation." But maybe early birds are only so
empathatic and agreeable because their day/night cycle is not always disrupted
by how the world is set up? Whereas us grumpy night owls having a case of a
bad monday morning is maybe just because we have to stand up early and don't
want to?

~~~
dx034
I find it counterintuitive. I would've thought that a night owl is more
compatible with being a social person. Much of our social exchange happens in
the evening (you rarely meet friends before work). Getting up at 5am as an
early bird doesn't really give you any more time with other people compared to
getting up later. So why night owls should be less sociable confuses me.

~~~
jariel
" Much of our social exchange happens in the evening (you rarely meet friends
before work)."

Socialization is not 'friends' it's 'everyone'.

~~~
dx034
Good point but at all places I've worked, it's more likely to have meetings or
other social exchanges after 5pm than before 8am.

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henearkr
Based on my own night-owl life, I'd suggest that might be because people might
be more sensitive to social interaction (thus these interactions being more
disruptive), and thus need the calm of the night to pursue their hobbies and
readings. Edit: that does not resist deeper analysis: one can as well evade
social interactions by studying in the very early morning after getting up.

~~~
mmm_grayons
Inertia usually means it's easier to stay up late than to get up early.

~~~
henearkr
Could even just be that night owls are "people with more inertia".

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trophycase
Correlation or causation? Do people that get up earlier have to work more?
Possibly live in more difficult conditions? Maybe are more addicted to
caffeine? Just kinda spitballing here.

~~~
6510
Cheap beds increase grey matter

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russellbeattie
"We also know that reduced volume in this area has been associated with
empathy, agreeableness and cooperation, so it ties nicely with behavioural
data that suggests early chronotypes tend to engage in more pro-social
behaviours than evening types."

As a night owl, I hate when generic observations are made about us. I hate it
even more when they're backed by scientific research and fit perfectly.

~~~
zzo38computer
Even though I am also a late chronotype too (I don't like calling it "night
owl" if you are not a owl though, because I am not a owl), I don't hate it
when stuff is backed by scientific research; I think is better that way,
rather than making accusations which have not ben scientifically tested.

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cbanek
> Eveningness, meanwhile, has previously been shown to be associated with an
> increased risk of psychiatric disorders and personality traits such a
> neuroticism.

Hey, I resemble that remark. I think it's also interesting that it's _more_
grey matter that causes it, usually I think I hear of many brain issues coming
from a lack of matter or deterioration in an area.

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dpenguin
Just woke up. Totally _agree_ with this article, even though it was published
4 hours ago in the early hours of the morning!

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rajansaini
Here is an interesting point for discussion that I hope others may chime in
on. What is the difference between being a night owl and experiencing jet lag?
With enough discipline, one can recover from jet lag in a matter of days. Why
then do some people believe themselves condemned to be a night owl or early
bird?

~~~
thisiszilff
For me at least I can train myself to go to bed at 10PM with discipline, but
if I miss one day I find myself back into the natural groove of going to bed
at 2AM. I do not expend effort to sleep at 2AM, I expend effort to sleep at
10PM. When I am jet lagged my body is confused and does not quite know when
2AM is, but eventually it figures it out and we're back to square one (Google
"zeitgeber" for how it figures this out, but subjectively I assure you my body
does the adjusting, not me).

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gpsx
I have been taking my temperature every day, maybe a few times a day for over
a month. I was just curious to see how helpful this is related to COVID-19.
Anyway, what I did see, for what it is worth, was my temperature change by a
lot over the course of a day, by over a degree. And I can guess what my
temperature will be based on how energetic I feel. I am not a morning person
and the temperature is higher later in the day, peaking from around 3:00 PM to
7:00 PM. It returns to around the wakeup temperature at maybe 11:00 PM or
midnight. I am guess the temperature profile for a morning person would look
different.

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pram
Checks out. I stay up all night and don’t like talking to people. Guess my
brain is fat.

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m463
I sort of suspect the way to become a night owl is to get enough sleep.

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collyw
Cue lots of self congratulatory facebook posts.

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SubiculumCode
Not a fan of Voxel Based Morphometry, personally.

