Sleep & Performance Data

What millions of games reveal about sleep

How much sleep does your brain actually need to perform its best? Using Lumosity data from thousands of users, Richards et al. (2017) found that cognitive performance peaks at around 7 hours of sleep, with measurable declines at both shorter and longer durations.

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A follow-up study (Richards et al., 2019) used the Lost in Migration game to investigate how cognitive performance fluctuates across the day, revealing distinct circadian patterns in attention and processing speed. These large-scale findings confirm what sleep researchers have long suspected, and give you a concrete, data-backed target for optimizing your own brain performance.

Related Research

Richards, A., Kanady, J. C., Huie, J. R., Straus, L. D., Inslicht, S. S., Levihn-Coon, A., et al. (2019). Work by day and sleep by night, do not sleep too little or too much: Effects of sleep duration, time of day and circadian synchrony on flanker-task performance in internet brain-game users from teens to advanced age. Journal of Sleep Research, 28(6), e12919.