Daily writing prompt

Are you more of a night or morning person?

Your body has a schedule, but are you listening?

You do not simply wake when you want to. You wake when your suprachiasmatic nucleus (a cluster of about 20,000 neurons in the hypothalamus) decides your internal clock has finished its nightly cycle (or just when your alarm goes off). You feel alert or sluggish depending on where you fall in a chronotype, a biologically influenced timing profile that shapes energy, mood, cognition, and metabolism.

We talk about morning people and night people as if they are personality traits, but neuroscience urges us to consider them as deep physiological patterns. The surprise is that neither chronotype is objectively “better.” The advantage depends on what modern life demands of you as well as how well your internal rhythms align with those demands.

Here is a more grounded look at what your body is actually doing.

I: What Chronotypes Really Are

Your circadian rhythm runs at about twenty-four hours depending on genetic architecture. The PER3, CLOCK, and BMAL1 genes help determine whether you drift earlier or later. About 40 percent of people lean morning, 30 percent lean evening, and the rest fall somewhere in the middle.

The timing affects more than just sleep. Research from the University of Birmingham and University of Surrey shows that chronotype predicts peak cognitive performance windows with real precision. Morning types perform best earlier in the day, with sharper working memory and mental stability. Evening types peak later, showing enhanced creativity and divergent thinking in the late afternoon and night.

Therefore, what you must consider is whether your schedule matches your internal timing.

II: The Neuroscience of Night Owls

Night owls tend to have delayed melatonin release, slower buildup of homeostatic sleep pressure, and greater resilience to sleep restriction in the late hours. They maintain higher activity in the reward circuitry during the evening, which has both benefits and risks.

Advantages

Peak creativity in non-standard hours. Several studies (including a 2020 paper in Personality and Individual Differences) show that evening types outperform morning types on divergent thinking tasks when tested in the late hours.
Flexible attention patterns. EEG recordings show that evening types maintain frontal-parietal connectivity later at night, supporting sustained attention into irregular hours.
Greater innovation under low structure. Environments that reward autonomy often see night-leaning individuals excel.

Drawbacks

Social jet lag. If society demands morning schedules, night owls experience chronic circadian misalignment, correlating with higher cortisol levels, impaired glucose regulation, and increased depressive symptoms.
Cognitive penalties early in the day. Working memory and decision-making dip sharply in morning hours for night types. (I can relate.)

So night owl advantages only fully show up when life allows a shifted schedule. Without that, the biological rhythm becomes a liability.

III: The Neuroscience of Morning Types

Morning people have earlier circadian anchors, in melatonin rising earlier, core body temperature peaking earlier, and cortisol following a strong morning surge that supports task initiation.

Advantages backed by research

Better synchronization with societal structure. Most schools and jobs begin early. Morning types rarely experience circadian misalignment.
Improved long-term health outcomes. Studies in Sleep Medicine Reviews link early chronotypes with lower obesity rates, more stable glucose metabolism, and reduced cardiovascular risk.
More consistent mood regulation. Morning types show stronger connectivity in the frontal control networks early in the day, which buffers emotional volatility.

Costs to consider

Lower creativity in late-day conditions. Evening testing often reveals reduced flexibility and weaker associative thinking.
Greater fatigue in late hours. Cognitive performance drops sharply past evening for early chronotypes.
Rigid energy curves. Morning types sometimes struggle with unpredictable schedule demands, late shifts, or creative tasks that require extended ideation windows.

Morningness thrives in structured worlds. It can falter in environments requiring spontaneity or irregularity in patterns.

IV: So Who Is “Better” Off?

Here is the actual scientific answer:
You do better when the world matches your chronotype.

The most consistent finding across chronobiology is the cost of forcing an internal rhythm to fit an external schedule. Researchers call this circadian misalignment, and it functions like internal jet lag every day. It impairs memory formation, increases inflammation, disrupts metabolic hormones, affects cardiovascular function, and even shifts risk-taking tendencies.

Night owls suffer more because modern society is built around morning expectations, but they thrive in environments where people can choose their hours.

A 2021 University of Melbourne study found that when allowed to select their own sleep–wake windows, evening types perform as well as or better than morning types on executive function tasks.

The question is not “Which type is better?”
The question is “Does your environment punish your biology or support it?”

V: The Nuanced Middle

Most people are intermediate types. The research calls this “neither type” or “mixed chronotype.” They tend to have flexible rhythms and benefit most from stable routines rather than extreme schedules.

The nuance is this:
The best schedule is the one that creates alignment between circadian biology and daily demand.
For some, that is a dawn-focused rhythm. For others, it is a late-evening flow state. For many, it is a middle ground with slight adjustments.

Conclusion: Consider yourself in rhythms

The rhythm in your brain is older than culture, older than electricity, older than cities. It evolved under open skies long before clocks existed. So follow your rhythm.

This does not mean abandoning discipline. It means using discipline to protect the hours that work for you. If your peak focus arrives at 10 p.m., build your creative world around that window. If your clarity comes with first light, guard that time like a resource. Chronotype does not decide what you can achieve. It only decides when your work can feel less like a fight.

Productivity culture loves to shame the tired and praise the early. Neuroscience suggests something gentler: you are not lazy, disorganized, or poorly optimized. You are rhythmic. And when you move with your rhythm instead of against it, getting started on your to-do list becomes less about squeezing output from a fatigued mind and more about allowing your best self to arrive on schedule.

November 1, 2025

You clock out. Your brain clocks in.

Every night, while the world fades into quiet, your brain gets to work. Far from idle, it runs a shift that scientists are still trying to understand: sorting, repairing, and processing the fragments of the day into something coherent.

The Science of Sleep and Memory

Sleep is not passive rest. It’s a complex biological process with stages as distinct as scenes in a film. During slow-wave sleep (SWS), the brain replays recent experiences, transferring short-term memories from the hippocampus to the neocortex (Rasch & Born, 2013). This “neural replay” consolidates learning, preserving only what matters most and pruning what doesn’t.

Then comes REM sleep, where neurons fire in irregular bursts, the amygdala lights up, and logic takes a backseat. This is the stage of vivid dreaming, where emotions, creativity, and subconscious processing take center stage. REM doesn’t just solidify memories; it integrates them, connecting new information with old to form insight (Walker & Stickgold, 2010).

In short, your dreams might be your brain’s way of telling stories about who you’re becoming.

Why Dreams Feel So Real

During REM, the brain’s prefrontal cortex, responsible for logic and self-awareness, quiets down. Meanwhile, visual and emotional centers fire intensely, creating immersive experiences that feel convincing even as they defy physics. This is why you can fly, cry, or argue with someone who doesn’t exist.

Neurologically, dreams may serve as emotional regulation. They allow us to revisit unresolved experiences in a safe mental space. Matthew Walker calls it “overnight therapy,” where the brain softens emotional edges while preserving the memory itself (Walker, 2017).

When the Night Shift Is Cut Short

The problem is that modern life interrupts this process. Teens and young adults (like me), those who need deep sleep most, are sleeping less than ever. Tell me about it. School starts early, screens glow late, and the myth of productivity glorifies being tired by giving your all every day. Yet chronic sleep deprivation can reduce hippocampal function, impair decision-making, and weaken emotional control (Curcio et al., 2006).

Without enough REM and deep sleep, the brain’s night shift never finishes its work, resulting in fuzzier memories, mood swings, and a subtle sense of disconnection.

What It Means for Young Minds

For high schoolers and college students, sleep is often treated like a luxury, not a necessity. But neuroscience argues the opposite. The hours you spend asleep aren’t wasted. They’re when your brain learns and grows. Every dream, no matter how strange, reflects a network of neurons trying to make sense of you and your world. And there are so many more benefits outside of what sleep does to your brain that should be emphasized.

The takeaway isn’t to chase every dream for meaning. It’s to respect the process that creates them. Let your brain do its night shift. Turn off the lights. Trust that in the quiet, it’s still working. Because it is organizing, remembering, and rebuilding who you’ll be when you wake.

References

Curcio, G., Ferrara, M., & De Gennaro, L. (2006). Sleep loss, learning capacity, and academic performance. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 10(5), 323–337.

Rasch, B., & Born, J. (2013). About sleep’s role in memory. Physiological Reviews, 93(2), 681–766.

Walker, M. P., & Stickgold, R. (2010). Overnight alchemy: Sleep-dependent memory evolution. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(3), 218–226.

Walker, M. P. (2017). Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Scribner.

Written by Mason Lai, a high schooler from California who wishes he let his brain do the night shift more.

Tag: sleep science

Are Night Owls or Morning People Healthier? Neuroscience Reveals a Surprising Winner