Doctors have long known that changes in body temperature can affect seizure activity. Fever can trigger seizures in some young children, while in rare forms of epilepsy, bathing in hot water can bring on a seizure. Raised body temperature can also trigger seizures in Dravet syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy that usually begins in infancy and is particularly sensitive to fever and overheating.

Temperature may also move in the other direction. Earlier animal studies found that epilepsy can alter daily temperature rhythms and affect nerve cells in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that helps regulate body temperature.

In our new research, our team, based in Italy, Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands, investigated how early these changes begin, what might be happening in the brain’s temperature-control centres and whether similar changes can be seen in people with epilepsy.

The brain has its own thermostat. The brain is metabolically active and can be slightly warmer than the rest of the body, although the difference varies between brain regions and over the course of the day. Deep in the brain, the hypothalamus coordinates many of the body’s responses to heat and cold. Different parts of the hypothalamus help balance heat loss and heat production to keep temperature within a narrow range.

Using mice in which we had induced a condition resembling temporal lobe epilepsy in humans, we combined specialised MRI measurements of temperature in the hippocampus with continuous........

© The Conversation