Flipping the switch on the body’s thermoregulatory system

A population of excitatory neurons has been found to have a key role in controlling body temperature in rodents. The discovery adds to a body of work that is raising questions about long-standing models of thermoregulation.
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  1. Clifford B. Saper

    1. Clifford B. Saper is in the Department of Neurology, Division of Sleep Medicine, and Program in Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.

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  2. Natalia L. S. Machado

    1. Natalia L. S. Machado is in the Department of Neurology, Division of Sleep Medicine, and Program in Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.

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Body temperature in mammals is tightly controlled1, and is typically maintained to within about 0.5° C of an animal’s mean core temperature (usually around 37° C) throughout life. However, lack of food can cause some mammals to enter a sleep-like state — called torpor or hibernation, depending on its duration — in which the body temperature can drop by 5–10° C (or, in some cases, even more) to conserve energy. Animals can also increase their body temperature (fever) in response to infection, slowing the replication of some invaders and improving the animal’s chance of survival2. It has long been known that these regulatory feats are accomplished by neurons in the brain’s preoptic area, but the exact identities of those neurons and their connections have not been understood. Writing in Nature, Takahashi et al.3 and Hrvatin et al.4 add to a flurry of papers that are revolutionizing our understanding of the preoptic neurons at the heart of thermoregulation.

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Nature 583, 34-35 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01600-5

Updates & Corrections

  • Clarification 13 August 2020: The caption for Figure 1 has been amended to make clear that mouse brains are depicted in the figure, and that much of the work leading to the previous model was performed in rats.

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