Everything starts to heat up from your car engine to your smartphone when you work hard, and that’s no different with the human brain. According to a recent study, the temperature in some areas of the brain can reach 40 degrees Celsius, depending on gender, time of day and other factors. The average normal temperature of the human body is just below 37 degrees.
The result was published by the British Medical Research Council’s (MRC) Molecular Biology Laboratory, which examined forty healthy volunteers aged 20 to 40 using a procedure called magnetic resonance spectroscopy. It was previously only possible to measure brain temperature in brain injury.
However, the new method made it possible to take 4D measurements without direct intervention, all of which were continuous throughout the day, allowing data to be collected on the influence of the circadian rhythm (circadian rhythm).
The biggest surprise is that a healthy human brain can reach a temperature that can be diagnosed as a fever elsewhere in the body.
Researcher John O’Neill said.
The average human brain temperature is 38.5 degrees. The female brain is 0.4 degrees warmer due to the effects of the menstrual cycle. The highest temperature measured was 40.9 degrees in the brain. The temperature fluctuated by one degree depending on the time of day.
Photo: N Rzechorzek / MRC LMB
We learned that brain temperature drops in the evening before going to bed and rises during the day. We have good reason to believe that this daily variability plays a key role in long-term brain health – we’ll examine this below.
O’Neill said.
Examining people with traumatic brain injury, they measured more diverse temperatures, from 32.6 degrees to 42.3 degrees. The data also suggest that brain temperature rises with age, and brain temperature control may be an important predictor of brain injury survival or prediction of subsequent disorders.
