Our brains aren’t meant to be awake after midnight

The human brain isn’t designed to be awake late at night, new research suggests. The researchers behind the paper, which is published in Frontiers in Network Psychology, say that the mind just isn’t meant to be awake during the darkest time of the night.

The root cause of the issue appears to be tied to just how dark the night can get and how easy it can be for negative thoughts to start creeping in. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that suggests the human mind functions very differently if you’re awake after midnight.

Some researchers believe this is likely tied to the circadian rhythm that helps our bodies function correctly. In fact, the aforementioned paper, which was published in 2022, breaks down how the different systems in the human brain function late at night. Those researchers believe our minds follow a natural 24-hour cycle of activity, which can positively or negatively affect our emotions.

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From an evolutionary sense, this all checks out. The human mind would have evolved to be awake and alert during the day and then in a state of resting at night. However, if you push past that and force yourself to remain awake, your mind isn’t at its usual level of awareness, which could make it likely for undue behavior to take place.

Of course, there’s still a lot of room for research here. There’s a lot we don’t know about the brain, but this new study has shed some additional light on the matter. The authors of this hypothesis, which they call “Mind After Midnight,” use examples like a college student plagued by sleepless nights. As the human brain is forced to stay up late at night, it becomes easier for a sense of loneliness, hopelessness, and despair to get a foothold.

There’s also research that seems to back up this hypothesis, suggesting that the risk of suicide is much higher between midnight and 6:00 a.m. compared to other times throughout the day. But, to date, no studies have really examined how all of this affects key parts of our minds—like our brain’s rewarding process.

And we still know so little about what our brains do while we’re sleeping. As such, the exact nature of how the brain might be affected when not sleeping after midnight is still a bit unclear. But, with research like this, scientists are slowly unraveling the mysteries surrounding the human mind.