THE NEUROSCIENCE BEHIND ALL-NIGHTERS

Illustration by Mercedes Luna

By Rokhyatou Toure

1:55 am. Walking into Butler Library during the week of Columbia University’s 2025 Homecoming game, my body adjusted to the warm temperature. The lights are dimmed on the first floor which set the mood for a cozy autumn night so comfy. It is so cozy that my eyelids lose control and soften slowly, getting lower and lower with each blink you take. It is almost as if I am being lulled to sleep. This was my experience on the Saturday of the 18th, but not for the night owls that nest the rooms of books, wakeful yet drooping. Slouched over their creaky Butler chair with an empty coffee cup in hand, their tired faces glowed from the laptop brightness. 

Hi, my name is Rokhyatou, and I want to know why people wake at this hour. Join me in interviewing real college students, their brains, neurons, and genes about their all-nighters or what I like to call THE NEUROSCIENCE BEHIND ALL-NIGHTERS. I searched the library and spotted those who looked like they were not leaving anytime soon. Pages of political theory are scattered around the table, and a laptop is overcrowded with tabs. I approached my first respondent.

 Student A: (School of General Studies, Political Science)

Me: “How do you think staying up late affects you in the short term versus the long term?”

Student A: “Short-term beneficial, but long-term, I am going to be in a lot of sleep debt…I am somebody who definitely functions better by waking up early and doing work…I sometimes don’t have enough time in the day to get everything done. So I force myself to stay awake.”

Let's take a closer look at what is really going on biologically in Student A’s brain when they try to force themselves awake.

Adenosine—a purine nucleoside that drives sleep through binding to receptors and slows down sleep activity in preparation for sleep—builds up the longer they are awake (Porkka-Heiskanen et al., 1997). So, yes, the coffee cup to their right can temporarily block these receptors, but only to a certain extent, given you are sacrificing more mental energy than they can manage to pay back. As sleep debt accumulates, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, located in the hypothalamus, works to preserve the body’s 24-hour cycle; at the same time, the hippocampus requires deep sleep to achieve synaptic homeostasis. Proteins/genes such as the Circadian Locomotor Output Cycle Kaput (CLOCK) and Brain and Muscle ARNT-Like1 (BMAL1), which help regulate approximately 40% of protein-coding genes in the mammalian genome, help influence the circadian rhythm (Menet et al., 2014). These proteins help turn on genes such as PER and CRY, which generate circadian rhythms.  CLOCK and BMAL1 are signaled to do their job after a long day of mental activity, but Student A is resisting sleep, so her circadian system is out of sync. While Student A deems her political science midterm is what keeps her up, traits such as being a night owl can be a habit,  and are also influenced by genetics. Let's hear from another night owl about neurogenetics.

 Intermission: Walking….elevator. Waiting. Waiting. Take the stairs one flight up. Spotted. 

Student B: (Columbia College sophomore, Mathematics and Statistics)
Me: If you weren’t here tonight, would you be sleeping? 

Student B: “No…almost every day [I stay up until] 2  a.m…”

Me: Growing up, did your parents go to bed the same time you do? Like 2 a.m.?

Student B: “Yes, they definitely also are like late sleepers. More so, my dad.” 

Research shows that whether you’re a morning person or a night owl is heritable. A study was conducted on approximately 8,200 identical (100% shared DNA) and fraternal twins (50% shared DNA). They compared the two twin groups and found that chronotype is consistently  ~40-50% heritable. Koskenvuo, M. et al. (2007). Genes like PER3 and CRY1 help determine where on the sleep–wake spectrum you tend to fall, influencing gene variation of CRY1, CLOCK, and other circadian genes. 

Talking to student B made me curious. Given the biological consequences of genetics, how do night-owls adapt to their molded circadian rhythm? I left the third floor of Butler and when you too search for more answers. 

Intermission: Walking….elevator. Elevator doors open. Spotted. 

Student C: (Barnard College sophomore, Neuroscience and Behavior)

Me: Do you think being a night owl is a gift or a curse?

Student B: “I think it depends. I know I work better at night, but sometimes I wish I could walk up early and get stuff done.”  

In other words, some people may “work better at night” compared to others, which comes down to inherited genes like CRY1, CLOCK, and BMAL1, which have different variants. The variants in the genes can make the circadian cycle longer or shorter than 24 hours. If you carry a longer cycle gene, you tend to delay sleep; if you have a shorter cycle, you advance sleep (Patke et.al.,2018). Genetics provides a backbone for this concept; however, the environment can amplify or mask “night-owl” characteristics.

From these interviews, I have gathered that behavior is inseparable from biology.  The “night owl” distinction is partly written in inherited variants of PER, CRY, and PER3, which alter the timing of the circadian transcription–translation loop. Yet even when genes bias us toward later or earlier sleep, the physiological rules remain universal: adenosine accumulates.