Night Owls Have Superior Cognitive Function, Study Finds

Night owls can hoot all they want!

New research suggests that people who stay up and do their best work at night have higher cognitive function than early birds, who are — let’s face it — often seen in a far more positive light.

An international team of scientists led by Imperial College London came to this intriguing conclusion in a new study published in the journal BMJ Public Health, where they also found that getting seven to nine hours of sleep is best for optimum brain function.

For the study, the scientists looked at the large-scale UK Biobank, which comprises of biomedical data and other information from half a million Brits, analyzing 26,000 participants who had undergone cognitive tests and answered whether they were early birds or night owls.

After crunching the numbers, the researchers found that one group of night owls had significantly higher cognitive function than another group of morning folks, surpassing them with 13.5 percent higher scores. In another sampling, night owls still came up on top with 7.5 percent higher scores.

People who are considered intermediate sleepers — they can switch between night and morning habits, basically — also topped pure early birds with higher scores at 10.6 and 6.3 percent respectively in two separate population samples.

Cognitive function was measured using results from four tests that measured visual and working memory, reaction time, verbal and numerical intelligence, and other cognitive qualities.

Scientists used different groups of people for comparison because some participants only completed two cognitive function tests instead of the four. People who did only two and people who did all four were all included in the study order to “optimize the analysis and enhance the representativeness of our findings,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers also found that it’s best to get a good night’s sleep of about seven to nine hours. Getting less than seven hours of sleep or getting more than nine hours negatively impacts brain function.

“It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean all morning people have worse cognitive performance,” Imperial College London medical researcher and study lead author Raha West said in a statement about the work. “The findings reflect an overall trend where the majority might lean towards better cognition in the evening types.”

But will this study change the overall impression of night owls who are seen as being lazy and irresponsible, as exemplified by truisms like “the early bird catches the worm”?

Maybe not. But if you’re a night owl, at least you can whip out this study and say you got the morning birds beat in one very important quality.

More on cognitive function: If You Read a Lot of Fiction, Scientists Have Very Good News About Your Brain