Hot but not bothered?🧠🔥 Our paper on human brain temperature is out today in Brain! @ONeill_Lab @MRC_LMB @Brain1878 #LMBResearch #BrainTemp #BrainTrauma doi.org/10.1093/brain/…
With thanks to our amazing participants, collaborators, and supporters @AriErcole @Etherjoe @ManuelCabeleira @CescaStats @EdinUniImaging @EdinUniNeuro @EdinUniBrainSci @CenterTBI @CellBiol_MRCLMB @RachelSEdgar and @The_MRC for funding
In a prospective analysis of healthy men and women, we found that brain temperature is higher than body temperature; brain temperature ranges from 36.1 to 40.9°C, with an average of 38.5C 🧠🔥.
Temperature varies across the brain by around 2.4°C, and is hotter in deep brain regions such as the thalamus. We think much of this regional variation can be explained by the anatomy of the brain’s blood vessels 🩸 #brainbloodvessels #cerebrovascular 
Brain temperature is 0.4-0.8°C higher in women in the post-ovulation phase of the menstrual cycle; we think this is important to understanding sex differences in brain health and function ♀️ @womensbrainpro #premenstrual #menopause #pregnancy
Brain temperature increases with age—around 0.6°C higher at 40 versus 20 years in deep brain regions; we think this is key to understanding healthy brain ageing and age-related brain disease #brainaging #brainageing #BrainAge #dementia #Alzheimers
Brain temperature varies by time of day and is lowest at night—this daily variation is clearer when we account for individual differences in the timing of the body clock. 🦉🕑😴 #chronotype #chronobiology #precisionmedicine #circadian #glymphatics #sleep
So, healthy brain temperature is higher and varies more than previously assumed. We’ve used our data to build HEATWAVE - the first 4D map of human brain temperature; an urgently-needed reference resource for interpreting brain temperature data in patients www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/groups/oneill/…
But…can brain temperature predict outcome in patients with traumatic brain injury? 🤕 We found that having an older or colder brain is associated with death, but the strongest single predictor of survival in intensive care is the presence of a daily rhythm in brain temperature
Can we help patients by promoting daily temperature rhythms in their brain? Carefully-designed clinical trials are needed, and these must consider the factors we have found to influence brain temperature.
Overall, we think the daily HEATWAVE inside your head may be important for keeping it healthy and could transform our understanding of how the brain works #brainhealth #mentalhealth #heatwave #brainfog Video summary available soon!
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