Our brains are hotter than we thought

If it’s 40 degrees outside you’d rather not walk there, but now it turns out it’s at least as hot in the back of our brains and it’s a lot warmer than we think thought before.

Lange tijd werd een schatting van die temperatuur van de diepe hersenen vooral gebaseerd op metingen die werden gedaan bij mensen die met hersenletsel in het ziekenhuis lagen, maar dankzij een vrij nieuwe techniek – magnetische resonantie-spectroscopie – kan die temperatuur tegenwoordig ook bij gezonde mensen gemeten become. Just by looking at how this temperature changes throughout the day, it still wasn’t possible. So far.

In a healthy person, the body temperature measured under the tongue is usually below 37 degrees. It has long been thought that brain temperature should be about the same. But now the average brain temperature seems to be around 38.5 degrees. If you look deeper into the brain, you will find areas that rise above 40 degrees, especially during the day in women.

Gender therefore influences the temperature level, but also age – the older you are, the hotter it is – and the menstrual cycle. The researchers hope that striking deviations from these averages in the future may, among other things, tell a lot about the survival chances of patients with brain damage.

Read more: Healthy human brains are hotter than previously thought, exceeding 40 degrees†