Your brain can heat up to 41 degrees Celsius if you think a lot

The number is equivalent to the chip of a smartphone using a 4G network.

We know the temperature of the body, or body temperature, determined by the most accurate measurements today is 36.77 degrees Celsius. The number is significantly lower than the 37 degrees Celsius mark as scientists science since the 19th century.

Part of the reason is that modern temperature measurement technologies have reached far higher resolutions than the mercury thermometers used two centuries ago. But in part, scientists also say that human body temperature is cooling - at a rate of 0.03 degrees Celsius every decade.

That means boys born in the year 2000 and on are 0.59 degrees Celsius cooler than their great-grandfathers, who were born in the early 1800s. And the trend toward hypothermia in women is large. than men.

But there is an opposite trend, in a new study in the journal Brain, scientists show that while women have lower body temperatures than men, their brains are hotter.

Like a computer CPU, the brain always radiates heat during its operation. This new study by scientists shows that some deep parts of the brain can reach temperatures of up to nearly 41 degrees Celsius. And the brains of women are on average 0.4 degrees Celsius warmer than men's.

The numbers also surprised scientists, because before, they didn't think our brains could get that hot.

John O'Neill, study author and a biologist at the British Medical Research Council's (MRC) Molecular Laboratory said: "For me, the most surprising finding from the study was: "This study shows that the brain of a healthy person can also reach a temperature that is diagnosed as a fever anywhere else on the body."

Previous studies have recorded temperatures in the brain as high as 41 degrees Celsius, but only in patients with brain injuries, some with neurological disorders such as Parkinson's or with cancerous tumors.

However, in this new study, scientists say this high temperature is not a sign of malfunction, but may actually be evidence that the brain is functioning normally and healthy.

In particular, the new technique they use to measure the temperature in the brain, could be used in the future to find signs of damage or disorder in patients ranging from headaches, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis to stroke, traumatic brain injury and cancer.

How to measure the temperature inside the brain?

When you have a fever, take your temperature, either in your armpits, in your groin, or in your mouth. There are a number of electronic thermometers commonly used during the COVID-19 pandemic, which you just need to shoot infrared rays on your skin, for example on the forehead, to get the temperature. But all of these approaches will fail when it comes to measuring brain heat.

That's because the brain is protected by the skull, which you can't shoot infrared rays through. You also cannot use a contact thermometer to measure the brain temperature of a healthy person.

Although in some cases – often as part of brain surgeries – scientists have done just that. They drilled a hole in the skull, inserted a thermometer inside the part of the brain to be measured, and recorded the contact temperature there.

Unfortunately, for the average healthy person, this invasive procedure is very risky. It can damage the brain and leave permanent brain scars. While, the gain achieved is just a number that is sometimes just known and quite meaningless.

To develop a noninvasive method of measuring brain temperature, scientists previously had an idea. They injected reflectors into the brains of mice, then shone near-infrared rays (the ones with the highest energy in the infrared spectrum and able to penetrate the skull) there.

Because heat-sensitive reflectors can emit different wavelengths when excited by near-infrared rays, scientists can use an ultra-sensitive sensor to pick up those wavelengths.

The data is then reconstructed to form a heat map of the brain. The advantage of this method is that it can allow real-time measurement of brain temperature. However, it was only done by injecting the contrast agent directly into the brains of mice.

This is taboo on humans, because injecting the contrast agent directly into the brain can be dangerous. While if only injected into a normal blood vessel, the contrast agent will not be able to cross the blood-brain barrier - a barrie that protects the brain, with proteins that act as "gatekeepers" only for nutrients to pass and block. all ingredients thought to be harmful to the brain, from bacteria, viruses, chemicals and drugs.

In short, the contrast-based approach still failed to measure temperature in the human brain. So, in their study, scientists at the MRC used a new method.

They call it the technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Instead of using infrared light to excite the reflector, the scientists shot magnetic waves directly into the brain, and recorded how these waves changed as they came into contact with hot tissue and bounced back. again.

The result will be a 4D, real-time heat map that records the temperatures of regions in the brain, with relative resolution.

Scientists have discovered that our brains can heat up to 40 degrees Celsius during the day

To test the ability of the MRS technique, scientists recruited 40 healthy volunteers aged 20-40 and measured their brain temperature at 3 times of the day, morning and afternoon. and night.

The results show that our brain is hotter than the rest of the body by up to 2 degrees Celsius. Specifically, the average temperature of the human brain is 38.5 degrees Celsius, higher than the temperature of 36.5 degrees Celsius when measured below. tongue.

During the day, brain temperatures were higher at night when the volunteers were getting ready for bed. "There is good reason to believe that this daily variation is associated with long-term brain health," says O'Neill.

Additionally, women's brains are 0.4 degrees Celsius hotter than men's, most likely due to their menstrual cycles. In particular, the highest temperature recorded in the brain of a healthy person was up to 40.9 degrees Celsius, equivalent to the temperature of a chip on a mobile phone when using a 4G network.

In comparison, patients with traumatic brain injury can push their brain temperature to as high as 42.3 degrees Celsius. And scientists are investigating the relationship between brain temperature and survival their.

Nina Rzechorzek, a neuroscientist from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, said that measuring the internal temperature of the brain in real time has great clinical significance. This could allow doctors to monitor that reading around the clock, like a patient's heart rate or blood pressure.

Brain temperature provides the information needed to assess a patient's health. At the same time, it can be a biomarker to diagnose possible future brain disorders.

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy shows promise in many hospitals, allowing doctors to care for patients with epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and those with stroke, traumatic brain injury and cancer.