People may be warmer than we thought. In a new study this week, scientists say they have managed to create the first maps of healthy people’s brain temperatures. Their findings show that the temperature of the brain varies widely depending on many factors, such as the time of day and the area of the brain, but that it is usually warmer than the rest of our body. The study was conducted mainly by researchers at the Molecular Biology Laboratory of the Medical Research Council (MRC) in the United Kingdom. They analyzed brain temperature data from two groups of people: intensive care patients who had undergone a brain scan as part of a previous traumatic brain injury study project and healthy volunteers who enrolled their brain scans for this current study. Both groups measured their temperatures during the day, in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. Overall, the average brain temperature for both groups was about 101.3 degrees Fahrenheit (38.5 degrees Celsius), which was higher than the temperature they received orally. But there was a lot of variability in the readings. The temperature of the human brain was usually lower at night, for example, and higher in the deeper regions of the brain than near the surface. Women and the elderly also tended to have higher temperatures. The group’s findings are published in the journal Brain. Other research has shown that our body temperature is not as static as people think and that it often differs from the supposed 98.6 degree Fahrenheit gold standard. But most of our knowledge about brain heat comes from studying people in the hospital, as it is much easier to monitor them constantly. Newer techniques have made it much easier to measure non-invasive brain temperature, and using these findings, the team was able to create a 4D temperature map (showing changes in space and time) of a healthy brain, which they named HEATWAVE. The findings will need to be validated by other researchers, but could have significant medical implications. First, it has long been thought that having a hot brain in general can increase the risk of serious complications. But in healthy brains, the team observed that temperatures could reach 105.62 degrees Fahrenheit without apparent problems. And even in critically ill patients, the team did not find a clear link between higher brain temperature and their chances of survival. What seemed to be most predictive of survival was whether a patient’s brain temperature changed as expected during the day – his pace, in other words. “We found that the temperature of the brain drops the night before you go to bed and rises during the day. “There is good reason to believe that this daily variation is related to long-term brain health – something we hope to explore later,” said study author John O’Neill, team leader at MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, in a statement. . If their hypothesis turns out to be true, the researchers say, then it may be possible to better diagnose brain disorders through temperature fluctuations or to improve current treatments.
