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"After 10 hours of being awake, the early birds showed reduced activity in brain areas linked to attention span, compared with the night owls."

Yah fine... but this study says nothing about the quality or intensity of the early birds vs. night owls.

10 hours is a pretty long period of time to stay focused. Instead they should compare the mental efficiency of the two groups over a two hour period of focused work.

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> but this study says nothing about the quality or intensity of the early birds vs. night owls.

Yes it does. Sleep length was fixed at 8 hours, and they acquired polysomnographic recordings of both nights spent at the lab and scored the sleep quality. ==> No statistical difference.

They controlled most controllable parameters. Read the paper and the supporting materials.

> "Yah fine... but this study says nothing about the quality or intensity of the early birds vs. night owls."

No offense, but that sounds like rationalizing the result to maintain your own current prejudices as opposed to a genuine criticism of the research.

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