The impact of social jetlag and chronotype on attention, inhibition and decision making in healthy adults

Abstract

Circadian rhythms are recurring cycles displaying periods of nearly twenty-four hours, which are present in a range of behavioural, physiological and cognitive processes (Buttgereit, Smolen, Coogan, & Cajochen, 2015). Circadian rhythms interact with homeostatic sleep pressure to shape the timing of sleep (Borbély, Daan, Wirz-Justice, & Deboer, 2016). An important manifestation of these circadian traits in human behaviour is chronotype, reflecting the tendency to structure daily activities, including sleep-wake times, according to the underpinning circadian clock (Roenneberg, Wirz-Justice, & Merrow, 2003). Chronotype is also associated with psychological domains, including personality, impulsivity and psychopathology (Li et al., 2018). Furthermore, chronotype is associated with optimal timing of daily performance in a number of cognitive tasks, with a synchrony effect existing between time of testing and chronotype for many cognitive domains (such that late chronotypes perform better later in the day, early chronotypes earlier in the day; Schmidt, Collette, Cajochen, & Peigneux, 2007). Heritability of chronotype is estimated at approximately 50% and recent genome-wide studies have identified a number of clock and non-clock genes associated with a modest portion of trait variance (Kalmbach et al., 2017). For appropriate entrainment of the circadian clock to environmental zeitgebers, the clock responds to both the zeitgeber timing and intensity to shape chronotype (Roenneberg, Kumar, & Merrow, 2007). Age and sex also profoundly influence chronotype throughout the lifespan (Fischer, Lombardi, Marucci-Wellman, & Roenneberg, 2017). One consequence of a later chronotype is a propensity to experience greater levels of social jetlag (SJL): the mismatch between internal biological time and socially driven behavioural schedules suggested to produce chronic circadian misalignment (Wittmann,

Biological Rhythm and Chronotype: New Perspectives in Health

“…However, social jet lag does not exclusively affect adolescents, as it has also been reported in shift workers, whose work during the night leads to a desynchronization of the circadian rhythm [191], and in young adults [192]. In contrast, not all populations showed a great social jet lag manifestation; for example, the Chinese population reported the social jet lag less frequently than the European population, and it was not correlated with higher BMI as it typically is in western societies [193].…”

Norepinephrine influences the circadian clock in human dermal fibroblasts from study participants with a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

“…No association between the Per3 VNTR and diurnal preference was observed among Norwegian university students (Andrade-Silva et al 2014;Li and Cassone 2015;Morioka et al 2010;Terazono et al 2003). Another study including one hundred and eighty eight healthy young adults, observed no effect for chronotype and circadian gene polymorphism of Clock and Per3 (McGowan et al 2020).…”

Is Balance Control Affected by Sleep Deprivation? A Systematic Review of the Impact of Sleep on the Control of Balance

“…Some of them argue that circadian oscillation was respected by performing tests at similar times (Ma et al, 2009 ; Aguiar and Barela, 2014 ; Umemura et al, 2018 ). However, the circadian timing system has individual adjustments that vary for each subject (Frey et al, 2004 ; Nag and Pradhan, 2012 ), following the chronotype characteristics (McGowan et al, 2020 ). As the circadian rhythm influences balance, it is important to control this parameter to compare balance performance.…”