The mind discriminates between cold and hot sensations by inducing distinct temporal exercise patterns in shared cortical areas, providing insights into how sensory info is encoded. Credit score: Neuroscience (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2024.11.045
Once we contact one thing sizzling or chilly, the temperature is consciously sensed. Earlier research have proven that the cortex, the outermost layer of the mind, is accountable for thermal sensations. Nonetheless, how the cortex determines whether or not one thing is sizzling or chilly is just not properly understood. Thermal sensitivity is commonly subjective and individualistic; what’s a cushty temperature for somebody is perhaps too sizzling or too chilly for another person.
In a brand new research, Professor Kei Nagashima from the Physique Temperature and Fluid Laboratory, College of Human Sciences, Waseda College, Japan, and Dr. Hironori Watanabe from Waseda College, in collaboration with others, used electroencephalography (EEG) to map the mind’s response to cold and hot temperatures and make clear the exercise patterns.
Within the research, 20 members have been uncovered to totally different temperature therapies on their proper index and center fingers. The temperature therapies got in pulses for 15 seconds with a 10-second intermittent temperature of 32°C.
Mind neural exercise in response to the 2 totally different temperatures, 40°C and 24°C, was recorded utilizing a wearable EEG machine. The research was revealed in Neuroscience on 9 January 2025.
The recordings have been analyzed to disclose region- and time-specific patterns of mind exercise.
Clustered mind exercise was present in 10 totally different areas inside the cortex. Curiously, each cold and hot temperatures invoked mind exercise in the identical ten areas. Nonetheless, the EEG differed in response to the 2 varieties of thermal sensation.
“Differences in these activity patterns will allow temperature differences to be distinguished, leading to different behaviors,” says Nagashima.
Several types of exercise patterns in the identical mind areas may very well be the underlying mechanism for distinguishing between cold and hot temperatures. It was additionally noticed that a lot of the mind exercise was concentrated in the proper hemisphere, indicating that it has a better position to play in thermal sensations than the left hemisphere.
The insights obtained on this research may very well be utilized to growing extra goal strategies to judge thermal consolation. Nagashima states,
“Thermal comfort is used as a standard for creating an optimal indoor environment (air conditioning) by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, but it is still based on subjective reporting. We thought that it was essential to evaluate it objectively and scientifically.”
Well being dangers as a result of ambiguity of subjective evaluations of thermal consolation may very well be circumvented with a greater understanding of the mind’s response.
Extra info:
Hironori Watanabe et al, Spatial and temporal patterns of mind neural exercise mediating human thermal sensations, Neuroscience (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2024.11.045
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Sizzling or chilly? How the mind deciphers thermal sensations (2025, January 21)
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