Baycrest

BrainMatters •Fall/Winter 2023 • 11 We see significant differences in the time of day at which people are best at paying attention, learning, solving problems, making complex decisions and more. Dr. Lynn Hasher, Senior Scientist at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute performance. Conducting the research with Dr. Hasher were Dr. Cynthia May (Professor of Psychology, College of Charleston) and Dr. Karl Healey (Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan). They found that a person's chronotype has a strong effect on their ability to pay attention, learn, solve problems, make complex decisions and even behave in an ethical manner. This means that a morning person may have more difficulty learning new information later in the day, while an evening person may struggle to make decisions before noon. Chronotype appears to have the strongest impact for adolescents and older adults. Adolescents are generally strong evening chronotypes, but they tend to start school early in the morning, which may have a negative effect on their academic performance. In contrast, because the majority of older adults show a strong biological preference for the morning, they tend to perform much worse on cognitive tests later in the day. This could result in a brain health assessment indicating cognitive decline for an individual who is in fact cognitively healthy, which could in turn lead to unnecessary stress for that person and compromise their quality of life. Overall, these results indicate the importance of recognizing and accounting for chronotype in a wide variety of settings, from academic and medical situations to social settings and more. "By better understanding and acknowledging chronotypes, we can help individuals optimize their mental performance and live their best possible lives, no matter their age," says Dr. Hasher. This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Aging.

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