Researchers found Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest health Sciences in Canada tested the cognitive performance of older adults and found that their brains showed signs of working better in the morning. The comprehensive results of this study can be found in the journal Psychology and Aging.
Lead author, John Anderson, said that this recent study provides the most compelling evidence yet that brain function differs throughout the day and that these differences can be measured to gauge mental performance. Prof. Anderson said that, "Time of day really does matter when testing older adults. This age group is more focused and better able to ignore distraction in the morning than in the afternoon."
During the research, four control groups were observed. Two were made up of young adults between the ages of 19 and 30, and the other two groups were composed of older adults with ages ranging from 60 to 82. Researchers conducted a series of memory tests between the hours of 8:30 to 10:30 am on one set of young adults and one set of older adults. Another testing session was conducted between1:00 to 5:00 pm on the remaining groups. As each subject participated in the test, brain activity was being measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging or an fMRI. This allowed the researchers to observe the areas of the brain that were being activated during the mental exercise.
During the afternoon sessions, researchers found that the older adults had a 10% higher tendency of being distracted by irrelevant information than the younger ones who were mostly able to block it out successfully. Also, based on the fMRI, the older group had less brain activity in their attention control areas, with the subjects often "idling." This type of brain performance is often seen when a person is not thinking about something in particular or is resting. In contrast, the research team found that, when tested during the hours of 8:30 and 10:30 AM, the older control group was more focused and less distracted than their afternoon-group counterparts. The fMRI scans also showed that they were activating the same brain areas as the younger subjects in order to avoid the distractions.