![]() ![]() ![]() “By extending the window for medical intervention, this technique offers promising prospects for improving patients’ chances of survival,” said Chen. In humans, inducing a torpor-like state has potential medical applications, with some suggesting that slowing down metabolism could buy critical time for treating life-threatening conditions such as heart attack and stroke. Chen said the result was “surprising and fascinating” and the team planned to test the technique in larger animals. The experiments, described in the journal Nature Metabolism, showed that the same device worked in rats, which had a 1C drop in core body temperature when the same brain region was targeted. When the ultrasound system was switched off, they woke up again. ![]() This allowed the mice to be kept at 33C in the hibernation-like state for 24 hours. The scientists also developed an automatic closed-loop feedback system that delivered an ultrasound pulse to keep the mice in the induced torpor if they showed signs of warming up. ![]() The mice’s metabolism also shifted from using both carbohydrates and fat for energy to only fat, a key feature of torpor, and their heart rates fell by about 47%, all while at room temperature. When stimulated, the mice showed a drop in body temperature of about 3C for about one hour. They showed that, in mice, these neurons could be artificially activated using ultrasound, delivered non-invasively through a helmet. The team first identified a specific group of neurons in a deep brain region called the hypothalamus preoptic area, which were found to be involved in regulating body temperature and metabolism during hibernation. “If this proves feasible in humans, we could envision astronauts wearing a helmet-like device designed to target the hypothalamus region for inducing a hypothermia and hypometabolism state,” said Hong Chen, an associate professor at Washington University in St Louis, who led the work. ![]()
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