Chronotype
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A chronotype is the behavioral manifestation of underlying
circadian rhythm A circadian rhythm (), or circadian cycle, is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. It can refer to any process that originates within an organism (i.e., Endogeny (biology), endogeno ...
's myriad of physical processes. A person's chronotype is the propensity for the individual to sleep at a particular time during a 24-hour period. ''Eveningness'' (delayed sleep period; most active and alert in the evening) and ''morningness'' (advanced sleep period; most active and alert in the morning) are the two extremes with most individuals having some flexibility in the timing of their sleep period. However, across development there are changes in the propensity of the sleep period with pre-pubescent children preferring an advanced sleep period, adolescents preferring a delayed sleep period and many elderly preferring an advanced sleep period. The causes and regulation of chronotypes, including developmental change, individual propensity for a specific chronotype, and flexible versus fixed chronotypes have yet to be determined. However, research is beginning to shed light on these questions, such as the relationship between age and chronotype. There are candidate genes (called
CLOCK genes A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and th ...
) that exist in most cells in the body and brain, referred to as the circadian system that regulate physiological phenomena (hormone levels, metabolic function, body temperature, cognitive faculties, and sleeping). With the exception of the most extreme and rigid chronotypes, regulation is likely due to gene-environment interactions. Important environmental cues (
zeitgeber A zeitgeber () is any external or environmental cue that entrains or synchronizes an organism's biological rhythms, usually naturally occurring and serving to entrain to the Earth's 24-hour light/dark and 12-month cycles. History The term ' (; ) ...
s) include light, feeding, social behavior, and work and school schedules. Additional research has proposed an evolutionary link between chronotype and nighttime
vigilance Vigilance may refer to: * Alertness * Vigilance, a creature ability in the ''Magic: The Gathering'' collectible card game * ''Vigilance'' (album), by Threat Signal * Vigilance (behavioural ecology), the watchfulness of prey for nearby predator ...
in ancestral societies. Humans are normally diurnal creatures, that is to say they are active in the daytime. As with most other diurnal animals, human activity-rest patterns are
endogenous Endogenous substances and processes are those that originate from within a living system such as an organism, tissue, or cell. In contrast, exogenous substances and processes are those that originate from outside of an organism. For example, es ...
ly controlled by biological clocks with a circadian (~24-hour) period. Chronotypes have also been investigated in other species, such as
fruit flies Fruit fly may refer to: Organisms * Drosophilidae, a family of small flies, including: ** ''Drosophila'', the genus of small fruit flies and vinegar flies ** ''Drosophila melanogaster'' or common fruit fly ** ''Drosophila suzukii'' or Asian fruit ...
and mice. Normal variation in chronotype encompasses sleep–wake cycles that are two to three hours later in evening types than morning types. Extremes outside of this range can cause a person difficulty in participating in normal work, school, and social activities. If a person's "
lark Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark occu ...
" or (more commonly) "
owl Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...
" tendencies are strong and intractable to the point of disallowing normal participation in society, the person is considered to have a circadian rhythm sleep disorder.


History

The 20th century saw greatly increased interest in and research on all questions about
sleep Sleep is a sedentary state of mind and body. It is characterized by altered consciousness, relatively inhibited sensory activity, reduced muscle activity and reduced interactions with surroundings. It is distinguished from wakefulness by a de ...
. Tremendous strides have been made in molecular, neural and medical aspects of biological rhythmicity. Physiology professor Nathaniel Kleitman's 1939 book ''Sleep and Wakefulness'', revised 1963, summarized the existing knowledge of sleep, and it was he who proposed the existence of a
basic rest-activity cycle BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...
. Kleitman, with his students including
William C. Dement William Charles Dement (July 29, 1928 – June 17, 2020) was an American sleep researcher and founder of the Sleep Research Center at Stanford University. He was a leading authority on sleep, sleep deprivation and the diagnosis and treatment of s ...
and
Eugene Aserinsky Eugene Aserinsky (May 6, 1921 – July 22, 1998), a pioneer in sleep research, was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1953 when he discovered REM sleep. He was the son of a dentist of Russian–Jewish descent. He made the dis ...
, continued his research throughout the 1900s. O. Öquist's 1970 thesis at the Department of Psychology, University of Göteborg, Sweden, marks the beginning of modern research into chronotypes, and is entitled ''Kartläggning av individuella dygnsrytmer'', or "Charting Individual Circadian Rhythms".


Measurement


Morningness–eveningness questionnaire

Olov Östberg modified Öquist's questionnaire and in 1976, together with J.A. (Jim) Horne, he published the 19-item
morningness–eveningness questionnaire The morningness–eveningness questionnaire (MEQ) is a self-assessment questionnaire developed by researchers James A. Horne and Olov Östberg in 1976. Its main purpose is to measure whether a person's circadian rhythm (biological clock) produce ...
, MEQ, which is still used and referred to in virtually all research on this topic. Researchers in many countries have worked on validating the MEQ with regard to their local cultures. A revision of the scoring of the MEQ as well as a component analysis was done by Jacques Taillard et al. in 2004, working in France with employed people over the age of 50. Previously the MEQ had been validated only for subjects of university age.


Circadian Type Inventory

The Circadian Type Inventory, developed by Folkard (1987), is an improved version of the 20-item Circadian Type Questionnaire (CTQ). The CTI was initially developed to identify individuals capable of adapting to shift work. Thus, the scale assesses two factors that influence a person’s ability to alter his or her sleeping rhythms: rigidity/flexibility of sleeping habits and ability/inability to overcome drowsiness. Since its creation, the scale has undergone a number of revisions to improve its psychometric properties. An 18-item version was used as part of the larger Standard Shiftwork Index (SSI) in a study conducted by Barton and colleagues. This shorter scale was then reduced and altered to make an 11 item scale by De Milia et al.


Composite Scale of Morningness

Smith et al. (1989) analyzed items from MEQ, Diurnal Type Scale (DTS), and CTQ and chose the best ones to develop an improved instrument, the 13-item Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM or CS). CSM consists of 9 items from the MEQ and 4 items from the Diurnal Type Scale and is regarded as an improved version of MEQ. It currently exists in 14 language versions; the most recently developed are Polish, Russian and Hindi.


Others

Roberts, in 1999, designed the Lark-Owl Chronotype Indicator, LOCI.
Till Roenneberg Till Roenneberg (born 4 May 1953) is a professor of chronobiology at the Institute of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany. Roenneberg, in collaboration with Martha Merrow, explores the impact of light ...
's Munich Chronotype Questionnaire (MCTQ) from 2003 uses a quantitative approach; his many thousands of subjects have answered questions about their sleep behavior.


Characteristics

Most people are neither evening nor morning types but lie somewhere in between. Estimates vary, but a 2007 survey of over 55,000 people by Roenneberg et al. showed that morningness–eveningness tends to follow a
normal distribution In statistics, a normal distribution or Gaussian distribution is a type of continuous probability distribution for a real-valued random variable. The general form of its probability density function is : f(x) = \frac e^ The parameter \mu ...
. People who share a chronotype, morningness or eveningness, have similar activity-pattern timing: sleep, appetite, exercise, study etc. Researchers in the field of
chronobiology Chronobiology is a field of biology that examines timing processes, including periodic (cyclic) phenomena in living organisms, such as their adaptation to solar- and lunar-related rhythms. These cycles are known as biological rhythms. Chronobi ...
look for objective markers by which to measure the chronotype spectrum. Paine et al. conclude that "morningness/eveningness preference is largely independent of ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic position, indicating that it is a stable characteristic that may be better explained by endogenous factors".


Sleep

Horne and Östberg found that morning types had a higher daytime temperature with an earlier peak time than evening types and that they went to sleep and awoke earlier, but no differences in sleep lengths were found. They also note that age should be considered in assessments of morningness and eveningness, noting how a "bed time of 23:30 may be indicative of a morning type within a student population, but might be more related to an evening type in the 40–60 years age group". Clodoré et al. found differences in alertness between morning and evening types after a two-hour sleep reduction. Duffy et al. investigated "changes in the phase relationship between endogenous circadian rhythms and the sleep-wake cycle", and found that although evening types woke at a later clock hour than morning types, morning types woke at a later circadian phase. Zavada et al. show that the exact hour of mid-sleep on free (non-work) days may be the best marker for sleep-based assessments of chronotype; it correlates well with such physiological markers as dim-light melatonin onset (DLMO) and the minimum of the daily
cortisol Cortisol is a steroid hormone, in the glucocorticoid class of hormones. When used as a medication, it is known as hydrocortisone. It is produced in many animals, mainly by the ''zona fasciculata'' of the adrenal cortex in the adrenal gland ...
rhythm. They also state that each chronotype category "contains a similar portion of short and long sleepers". Chung et al. studied sleep quality in shift-working nurses and found that "the strongest predictor of sleep quality was morningness–eveningness, not the shift schedule or shift pattern", as "evening types working on changing shifts had higher risk of poor sleep quality compared to morning types".


Diurnal rhythms

Gibertini et al. assessed blood levels of the hormone
melatonin Melatonin is a natural product found in plants and animals. It is primarily known in animals as a hormone released by the pineal gland in the brain at night, and has long been associated with control of the sleep–wake cycle. In vertebrates ...
, finding that the melatonin acrophase (the time at which the peak of a rhythm occurs) was strongly related to circadian type, whereas amplitude was not. They note that morning types evidence a more rapid decline in melatonin levels after the peak than do evening types. Baehr et al. found that, in young adults, the daily body temperature minimum occurred at about 4 a.m. for morning types but at about 6 a.m. for evening types. This minimum occurred at approximately the middle of the eight-hour sleep period for morning types, but closer to waking in evening types. Evening types had a lower nocturnal temperature. The temperature minimum occurred about a half-hour earlier in women than in men. Similar results were found by Mongrain et al. in Canada, 2004. Morning types had lower pain sensitivity throughout a day than evening types, but the two chronotype groups did not differ in the shape of diurnal variations in pain. There are some differences between chronotypes in sexual activity, with evening chronotypes preferring later hours for sex as compared to other chronotypes.


Personality

Chronotypes differ in many aspects of personality, such as grit, but also in intellectual domains, like creative thinking.


Intelligence

A meta-analysis found a small positive association between an evening chronotype and intelligence; similar results were subsequently found in a large sample using a standardized battery.


Genetic variants associated with chronotype

Studies show that there are 22 genetic variants associated with chronotype. These variants occur near genes known to be important in
photoreception A photoreceptor cell is a specialized type of neuroepithelial cell found in the retina that is capable of visual phototransduction. The great biological importance of photoreceptors is that they convert light (visible electromagnetic radiatio ...
and
circadian rhythm A circadian rhythm (), or circadian cycle, is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. It can refer to any process that originates within an organism (i.e., Endogeny (biology), endogeno ...
s. The variant most strongly associated with chronotype occurs near
RGS16 Regulator of G-protein signaling 16 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''RGS16'' gene. Function The protein encoded by this gene belongs to the 'regulator of G protein signaling' family. It inhibits signal transduction by increasing ...
, which is a regulator of
G-protein G proteins, also known as guanine nucleotide-binding proteins, are a family of proteins that act as molecular switches inside cells, and are involved in transmitting signals from a variety of stimuli outside a cell to its interior. Their act ...
signalling and has a known role in circadian rhythms. In mice, gene ablation of Rgs16 lengthens the circadian period of behavioural rhythm. By temporally regulating
cAMP Camp may refer to: Outdoor accommodation and recreation * Campsite or campground, a recreational outdoor sleeping and eating site * a temporary settlement for nomads * Camp, a term used in New England, Northern Ontario and New Brunswick to descri ...
signalling, Rgs16 has been shown to be a key factor in synchronising intercellular communication between pacemaker neurons in the
suprachiasmatic nucleus The suprachiasmatic nucleus or nuclei (SCN) is a tiny region of the brain in the hypothalamus, situated directly above the optic chiasm. It is responsible for controlling circadian rhythms. The neuronal and hormonal activities it generates regula ...
(SCN), the centre for circadian rhythm control in humans.
PER2 PER2 is a protein in mammals encoded by the ''PER2'' gene. ''PER2'' is noted for its major role in circadian rhythms. Discovery The ''per ''gene'' ''was first discovered using forward genetics in '' Drosophilla melanogaster'' in 1971. Mammalia ...
is a well-known regulator of circadian rhythms and contains a variant recently shown to be associated with iris formation. This suggests a link between iris function and chronotype. Per2 knockout mice show arrhythmic locomotor activity. The gene ASB1, associated with eveningness and a tendency to day-napping is a result of
interbreeding between archaic and modern humans There is evidence for interbreeding between archaic and modern humans during the Middle Paleolithic and early Upper Paleolithic. The interbreeding happened in several independent events that included Neanderthals and Denisovans, as well as seve ...
and is originally a
Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While th ...
trait, possibly linked to a more
crepuscular In zoology, a crepuscular animal is one that is active primarily during the twilight period, being matutinal, vespertine, or both. This is distinguished from diurnal and nocturnal behavior, where an animal is active during the hours of daylig ...
lifestyle in this species. Therefore, the chronotype is genetically heritable.


Chronotype and disease

Disrupted circadian rhythms are associated with several human diseases, for example, chronotype is genetically correlated with BMI (
body mass index Body mass index (BMI) is a value derived from the mass (weight) and height of a person. The BMI is defined as the body mass divided by the square of the body height, and is expressed in units of kg/m2, resulting from mass in kilograms and he ...
). However, cause-and-effect is not yet determined.


Notes


Further reading

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References

{{SleepSeries2 Sleep physiology Circadian rhythm Sleep