A new study links a daily cycle in brain temperature and survival after traumatic brain injury

According to recent studies, the average temperature of the human brain varies much more than previously thought. This can indicate healthy brain activity. The temperature in the mouth is usually less than 37°C in healthy men and women, but the average temperature in the brain is 38.5°C, and deeper parts of the brain often reach 40°C, especially in women during the day.
In the past, investigating human brain temperature has depended on data collected from brain-injured ICU patients, often requiring direct monitoring of the brain. Recently, a brain scanning method called magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) has allowed researchers to measure brain temperature in healthy people without the need for any invasive procedures. But until recently MRS was not used to study how brain temperature changes during the day and without taking into account how the human "body clock" affects this.

The extreme temperatures of the brain in healthy people: relatively warm temperatures in women after ovulation in the morning compared to the coldest temperatures in men at night. Lighter yellow indicates warmer temperatures.
Credit: Nina Rzechorzek/MRC LMB/Brain
In the new study, they created the first four-dimensional map of brain temperature in healthy people. This map shows the amazing extent to which brain temperature varies by brain region, age, sex, and time of day, disproving many previous opinions. It is important to note that these results also contradict the common assumption that body temperature and brain temperature are the same.
In a study, recently published in the journal Brain, they also examined data from people with traumatic brain injury and found a high correlation between survival and the presence of daily cycles in brain temperature. These discoveries can help in the diagnosis, medical prognosis and treatment of brain injury.
To study the healthy brain, the researchers recruited 40 volunteers, aged 20 to 40, who were scanned in the morning, afternoon and late evening for one day, in Edinburgh.
They also gave the participants an activity monitor on the wrist, so that genetic and lifestyle differences in the timing of each person's body clock (biological clock) could be taken into account. In the case of "night birds" and Shichimi Kom, knowing the biological time on the day when each brain temperature was measured made it possible to take into account in the analysis the differences between the biological clock of each volunteer.

In healthy participants, the average brain temperature was 38.5°C, more than two degrees warmer than the temperature measured under the tongue. In the study it was also found that the temperature of the brain changed according to:
- the time of day
- the area of the brain
- Sex and the ovulation cycle
- the age
The cerebral cortex is usually cooler, but deeper brain structures were often warmer than 40°C, and the highest observed brain temperature was 40.9°C. In all individuals, temperature showed a consistent variation of close to 1°C by time of day, with the highest brain temperatures observed in the afternoon and the lowest in the evening.
On average, women's brains were about 0.4°C warmer than men's brains. This difference between the sexes was most likely caused by the ovulatory cycle because most of the women were scanned in the post-ovulatory phase of the cycle, and their brain temperature was around 0.4°C warmer than that of the women scanned in the pre-ovulatory phase.
The results also showed that brain temperature increased with age in the participants' 0.6-year range, most notably in areas deep in the brain, where the average increase was XNUMX°C. The researchers suggest that the brain's cooling capacity may decline with age and more work is needed to investigate whether there is a link to the development of age-related brain diseases.
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