It turns out that the healthy human brain gets hotter than previously thought and can reach 40 degrees Celsius



Machines such as computers and car engines are known to get hot during operation, but healthy human brains also get hotter than previously thought, and research shows that they can exceed 40 degrees in the depths. Was reported.

daily temperature rhythm in the human brain predicts survival after brain injury | Brain | Oxford Academic

https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awab466

Healthy human brains are hotter than previous | Eurek Alert!
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/955387

The Human Brain Runs Way Hotter Than We Ever Realized, Scientists Find
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-research-shows-your-brain-can-run-a-lot-hotter-than-we-ever-realized

Previously, direct brain monitoring was required to measure human brain temperature, so brain temperature studies rely on data from patients being treated in the intensive care unit due to brain damage. I did. However, in recent years, it has become possible to measure the brain temperature of healthy humans by a non-invasive method using a brain scanning technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) .

Therefore, research teams such as the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom recruited 40 healthy subjects aged 20 to 40 years old at the imaging facility of the Royal Clinic of Edinburgh in the morning (9:00 to 10:00) and afternoon. Brain temperature was measured three times (16:00 to 17:00) and midnight (23:00 to 0:00). Subjects wore an activity monitoring device on their wrists one week before the scan, which also collected data on the body clock, circadian rhythm, and lifestyle.

As a result of the measurement, it was found that the average brain temperature of the subjects was 38.5 degrees, which was almost 2 degrees higher than the body temperature (sublingual temperature) measured in the mouth of a healthy person. There is a cycle in which the brain temperature drops the most before going to sleep and rises the most in the afternoon, and the fluctuation in the day was about 1 degree on average, and the highest measured brain temperature was 40.9 degrees. Reached.



In addition, the brain temperature is higher on the inside than on the outside, the female brain is on average 0.4 degrees higher than the male brain, and the temperature in the deep part of the brain rises with aging and rises on average 0.6 degrees in 20 years. It has also been reported. The research team speculates that the difference in brain temperature between men and women may be related to the menstrual cycle of women.

In addition, the research team also collected continuously collected brain temperature data from patients who were taken to the intensive care unit with moderate to severe external brain damage and analyzed the differences from healthy subjects. As a result, although the range of brain temperature was as wide as 32.6 to 42.3 degrees in the group suffering from brain damage, the rate of periodic fluctuation of brain temperature in one day was only about 25%, and the change in brain temperature. The more patients there were, the higher the survival rate tended to be. Although this result shows only correlation, the research team says that the patient's brain temperature cycle could be a promising tool for predicting survival.



'The most surprising thing about this study is that the healthy human brain can reach temperatures where other parts of the body are diagnosed with fever,' said Dr. John O'Neill of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. It was previously confirmed that people with brain damage had such high temperatures, but it was attributed to the damage. '

Dr. Nina Rzechorzek of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, the lead author of the paper, argues that a healthy human brain temperature map, including the passage of time, helps to better understand brain function. In addition, 'the results of this study will open the door to future research on whether the disturbance of the daily brain temperature rhythm can be used as an early biomarker for some chronic brain diseases including dementia.' Said.

in Science, Posted by log1h_ik