A time to think: Circadian rhythms in human cognition

Schmidt, Christina; Collette, Fabienne; Cajochen, Christian; Peigneux, Philippe

doi:10.1080/02643290701754158

Cited by 632 publications

(595 citation statements)

References 120 publications

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“…We confirm previously established behavioral effects showing that at synchrony, older adults are able to resist distraction (Hasher et al, 2005;Rowe et al, 2006;Schmidt et al, 2007), and crucially for the first time, demonstrate that to do so they activate a set of attentional control regions recruited by younger adults. Older adults tested in the afternoon during their off-peak time of day showed both a behavioral and neural decrement, as they are not as able to resist distraction nor draw on the appropriate brain regions as their young peers or age mates tested in the morning.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Timing is everything: Age differences in the cognitive control network are modulated by time of day.

Anderson¹,

Campbell²,

Amer³

et al. 2014

Psychology and Aging

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Current behavioral evidence suggests that attention regulation in humans varies with a circadian arousal rhythm that is influenced by age. However it is not known whether functional BOLD activation also varies with performance across the day in older adults. We used fMRI to compare activity in the control network in older adults tested in the morning and older and younger adults tested in the afternoon. Using a 1-back task with simultaneously presented stimuli (words superimposed on pictures), we show that older adults tested in the morning are not only more able to ignore the unattended stimulus than older adults in the afternoon, but activate similar cognitive control regions to young adults (rostral prefrontal and superior parietal cortex). We conclude that time of day modulates task-related fMRI signal in older adults and that age differences are reduced when older adults are tested at peak times of day. Keywordstime of day; circadian arousal; aging; attention; cognitive control; distraction; implicit memory; control network There are well known circadian fluctuations in cognitive alertness Yoon et al., 1999;Paradee et al., 2005;Blatter and Cajochen, 2007;Murray et al., 2009), fluctuations measurable with paper and pencil inventories highly correlated with physiological arousal (Horne and Ostberg, 1976;Roenneberg et al., 2003;Zavada et al., 2005). Additionally, there are age and individual differences in alertness patterns, such that the majority of older adults are shifted towards morningness, with younger adults falling into neutral and evening type ranges of alertness. Similar effects have also been demonstrated in animal studies which report robust age by synchrony interactions for arousal and memory Hasher, 1999, 2002 CIHR Author Manuscript CIHR Author Manuscript CIHR Author ManuscriptConcerning cognitive functioning, there is a substantial literature showing a synchrony effect (May et al., 1993;May and Hasher, 1998) such that performance, particularly on tasks requiring effortful (top-down) executive control or attention regulation are best performed at one's better times of day (May and Hasher, 1998;May, 1999;Yoon et al., 1999; Hasher et al., 2005;Ramírez et al., 2006Ramírez et al., , 2012Goldstein et al., 2007;Rowe et al., 2009; Hahn et al., 2012;Lehmann et al., 2013).Despite a rich behavioral literature, the influence of circadian rhythms and time of testing is largely unexplored in the neuroimaging literature and what research there is has focused on young adults (e.g. Marek et al., 2010) showing time of day differences in the ability to regulate strong but incorrect responses in the orienting attentional network -a division of the task-positive network that regulates where and when attention is directed in response to external cues (Schmidt et al., 2012).These findings are suggestive for young adults but an open and critical question is the impact of different times of testing for older adults -whose behavioral data shows substantially larger fluctuations, including in regulation of di...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Timing is everything: Age differences in the cognitive control network are modulated by time of day.

Anderson¹,

Campbell²,

Amer³

et al. 2014

Psychology and Aging

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“…This task challenges working memory, which refers to the individual capacity to temporarily maintain active relevant information to perform an ongoing task [46,47]. This task involves the need to continuously update and inhibit information, and also has an attentional component to it.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dawn simulation light impacts on different cognitive domains under sleep restriction

Gabel

Maire

Reichert

et al. 2015

Behavioural Brain Research

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“…The investigation of TOD effects on other cognitive domains has not been widely investigated, however, TOD does not appear to affect tasks which utilise well-established knowledge such as sentence completion or vocabulary (Borella, Ludwig, Dirk, & Ribaupierre, 2011). Tasks longer in duration with a high cognitive load are more likely to be affected by TOD (Schmidt et al, 2007). It is, thus, clear that the characteristics of the task employed affects the degree of vulnerability to TOD effects.…”

Section: Time Of Daymentioning

confidence: 99%

Time of day and caffeine influence some neuropsychological tests in the elderly.

Walters¹,

Lesk²

2015

Psychological Assessment

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We report that performance on neuropsychological tests used in the diagnosis of dementia can be influenced by external factors such as time of day (TOD) and caffeine. This study investigates TOD effects on cognitive performance in the elderly. The optimal TOD at which an individual is at their maximal arousal alters with age and in the elderly typically occurs in the morning. Neuropsychological test scores from healthy elderly participants were analysed to determine whether TOD affected performance. Interactions between caffeine and TOD were also investigated. Across two data sets that were analysed, significant TOD effects were noted for Pattern Comparison Speed (PCS), Letter Comparison Speed (LCS), Trail Making Test Part A, Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Graded NamingTest (GNT), revealing a decline in test scores as TOD increases. Significant interactions between TOD, age and the PCS, LCS and Trail Making part A were noted in data set one. In data set two, where caffeine intake had been controlled for, significant interactions between caffeine, TOD and scores on the MMSE and GNT were found. The TOD and caffeine effects highlight the need to control for these external factors when scoring the assessments. This conclusion has implications for the clinical procedure of diagnosis and treatment of dementia and Alzheimer's.

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A time to think: Circadian rhythms in human cognition

Cited by 632 publications

References 120 publications

Timing is everything: Age differences in the cognitive control network are modulated by time of day.

Timing is everything: Age differences in the cognitive control network are modulated by time of day.

Dawn simulation light impacts on different cognitive domains under sleep restriction

Time of day and caffeine influence some neuropsychological tests in the elderly.

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