A new research revealed that inadequate exposure to bright light during morning may be instrumental in depriving adolescents of sufficient sleep.

Lead author Mariana Figueiro, assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Centre (LRC), said, "As teenagers spend more time indoors, they miss out on essential morning light needed to stimulate the body's 24-hour biological system, which regulates the sleep/wake cycle."

"These morning-light-deprived teenagers are going to bed later, getting less sleep and possibly under-performing on standardised tests. We are starting to call this the teenage night owl syndrome," Figueiro said.

Figueiro along with LRC director Mark Rea discovered that 11 eighth grade pupils who put on special goggles in order to put off short-wavelength (blue) morning light from reaching their eyes had a 30-minute postponement in sleep onset by the end of the five-day research.

"If you remove blue light in the morning, it delays the onset of melatonin, the hormone that indicates to the body when it's night time," explained Figueiro.

"Our study shows melatonin onset was delayed by about six minutes each day the teens were restricted from blue light. Sleep onset typically occurs about two hours after melatonin onset," she also said.

The results of the study were released in Neuroendocrinology Letters. (With Input from Agencies)