'Night owls' - people who go to bed and get up later - have fundamental differences in their brain function compared to 'morning larks', which may put constraints on their normal working day, a study has found.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham in the UK and colleagues found that individuals whose internal body clock dictates that they go to bed and wake up very late have lower resting brain connectivity in many of the brain regions that are linked to the maintenance of consciousness.
This lower brain connectivity was associated with poorer attention, slower reactions and increased sleepiness throughout the hours of a typical working day, according to the study published in the journal SLEEP.