Relations
between human’s circadian rhythms and mental health have been attracting much attention
for decades. Due to the internal and external influencing factors, circadian
rhythm expression differs among individuals. As one of the typical manifestations
of rhythmic expression difference, chronotype (including morningness,
eveningness and neither-type) has been attracting much more attention since the
pioneering work of Horne and Ostberg. Numerous studies have shown that
morningness is an important protective factor for mental health, while
eveningness a risk factor for triggering potential psychological disorders. In
this review, we aim to systematically summarize the influence of chronotype on
individuals’ mental and behavioral activities, and to further expound the
potential mechanisms behind this effect, which include genetic, psychological and
neural mechanisms. Suggestions are put forward for future research, such as focusing
on the improvement of study design, increasing casual research, employing
advanced neuroscience techniques to explore the mechanisms of how chronotype
affects different populations, as well as strengthening intervention research
to promote the transformation of experimental results into practical
applications.
