{"id":223414,"date":"2025-10-15T03:11:52","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T08:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/the-human-mind-isnt-meant-to-be-awake-past-midnight-scientists-warn"},"modified":"2025-10-15T03:11:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T08:11:52","slug":"the-human-mind-isnt-meant-to-be-awake-past-midnight-scientists-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/the-human-mind-isnt-meant-to-be-awake-past-midnight-scientists-warn","title":{"rendered":"The Human Mind Isn\u2019t Meant to Be Awake Past Midnight, Scientists Warn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-human-mind-isnt-meant-to-be-awake-past-midnight-scientists-warn2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the middle of the night, the world can sometimes feel like a dark place. Under the cover of darkness, negative thoughts have a way of drifting through your mind, and as you lie awake, staring at the ceiling, you might start craving guilty pleasures, like a cigarette or a carb-heavy meal.<\/p>\n<p>Plenty of evidence suggests the <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41386-020-00879-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">human mind functions differently<\/a> if awake at nighttime. Past midnight, negative emotions tend to draw our attention more than positive ones, <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.smrv.2015.10.003\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">dangerous ideas grow<\/a> in appeal, and inhibitions fall away.<\/p>\n<p>Some researchers think the human <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nigms.nih.gov\/education\/fact-sheets\/Pages\/circadian-rhythms.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">circadian rhythm<\/a> is heavily involved in these critical changes in function, as they outline in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fnetp.2021.830338\/full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2022 paper<\/a> summarizing the evidence of how brain systems function differently after dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the middle of the night, the world can sometimes feel like a dark place. Under the cover of darkness, negative thoughts have a way of drifting through your mind, and as you lie awake, staring at the ceiling, you might start craving guilty pleasures, like a cigarette or a carb-heavy meal. Plenty of evidence [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}