Brain Training in the Morning or at Night: Which Is Better?

In 1993 the psychologists May, Hasher and Stoltzfus published a study that tested the memory of younger and older adults in the morning and in the late afternoon. A questionnaire showed that most younger adults were evening or neutral types, while most older adults were morning types. On the memory test, the gap between younger and older adults was large in the late afternoon, but in the morning there was none. When each group was tested at its own best time of day, the results changed.

So is brain training better in the morning or at night? In this post I look at what research says about time of day and the mind, and then look at where to fit brain training into daily life.

The mind changes with the time of day

As the study above shows, people have times of day when their minds work best, and those times differ from person to person. Whether someone is a morning or an evening type is called their chronotype.

A 2007 review by Schmidt and colleagues sets out how attention, executive function and memory change across the day, and how those changes differ between morning and evening types. The tendency to perform better when a task falls at your own best time is called the synchrony effect.

So there is no one answer for everyone. For a morning type and an evening type, the answer may even be opposite.

The case for the morning

Fewer interruptions. Before work and chores begin, messages and errands are less likely to cut in.

A signal that the day has started. Get up, wash your face, do your brain training. Once it is part of the morning routine, you no longer have to decide whether to do it.

A good time for morning types. As the research above suggests, it falls in their best hours.

On the other hand, if an evening type forces themselves to get up early to train, neither the scores nor the mood may improve, and it may not last.

The case for the evening

Easier to find time. Once work and housework are done, many people have some time left for themselves.

A way to close the day. Checking your results and confirming that you kept it up today, then resting, supports the wish to keep going.

Sleep helps sort what we learn. The role of sleep in consolidating memory is discussed in detail in reviews such as Diekelmann and Born’s 2010 review. But brain-training games are a little different from studying something to take away and remember, so it is not clear whether this is a reason to train at night.

Screens before bed

The concern with training at night is looking at a screen before sleep.

In 2015 Anne-Marie Chang and colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital published a study in which 12 young adults spent five evenings reading an e-book on an iPad for four hours before bed, and five evenings reading a printed book. After the iPad evenings, the sleep hormone melatonin was suppressed, it took longer to fall asleep, and they were sleepier the next morning.

That study compared four hours every night. It does not show that a few minutes of brain training has the same effect. Still, one option is to train not right before you get into bed, but after dinner or before a bath, when there is still some time before sleep. iPhone and iPad also have Night Shift, which makes the screen colours warmer in the evening.

Not when, but alongside what

Even if you choose a time of day, you won’t always be free at the same time every day. There is a view that brain training lasts longer when it is tied to something you do every day anyway, rather than to a clock time.

The psychologist Peter Gollwitzer called plans in the form “when X happens, I will do Y” implementation intentions. A 2006 meta-analysis by Gollwitzer and Sheeran found across 94 studies that deciding things in this form helps people act on their goals.

For brain training, it might look like this:

• In the morning, while the coffee is brewing
• When you sit down on the train to work
• When you finish lunch
• When the dinner dishes are done
• After your bath, once your hair is dry

The trigger works best if it is something that happens almost every day. Then even when the clock time shifts, the trigger still comes.

If you don’t know whether you are a morning or an evening type, you could try a week of mornings and a week of evenings and compare your scores and how easy it was to keep going. If the time with better scores and the time that is easier to keep up are different, one option is to choose the easier one. If you don’t keep going, being at your best does not help.

Choosing a time in BrainDojo

BrainDojo is an iPhone and iPad app for keeping up daily brain training with short mini-games.

During the first setup, the app asks “When will you train?” and you choose Morning, Daytime or Evening. Your daily reminder is then set to 8:00, 12:30 or 21:00. In Reminder Settings you can set a different time for each day of the week, so you can fit it to your life, for example on the commute on weekdays and after breakfast at weekends. There is also a Don’t-forget Reminder that sends an extra notification to help you not miss a day.

There is a home screen widget that lists the day’s Today’s Training, and tapping one opens that training. Once you have decided what to tie brain training to, placing the widget where you will see it at that moment is one way to help.

Every training except the newest ones is free to play, and so are Today’s Training, the Brain Dojo Check once a day, and a calendar where you stamp the days you trained. The free version shows ads. BrainDojo Plus removes them and opens the new trainings anytime. When a new training appears in Today’s Training, you can play it free that day.

Getting Started with BrainDojo walks through the first session, and How Many Minutes a Day Should You Do Brain Training? looks at how long to train.