• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

It’s Possible To Create A Hibernation-Like State By Pinging Ultrasound At The Brain

May 26, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

If, in the depths of winter, when the nights draw in and the temperature drops all the way down to “screw this” degrees, you’ve ever found yourself wondering why humans can’t just make like so many chomnky bears and spend the whole season snuggled up in bed, then believe us: you’re not alone. So, a new result published today might be just the pick-me-up you need next time you find yourself reaching for a sweater. 

By pelting rodents’ heads with ultrasound pulses – a procedure that is not as traumatic as it sounds, we promise – scientists from Washington University in St. Louis have managed to induce a reversible hibernation-like state in mice and rats known as torpor, marking what may be a major step towards potential human applications in future.

Advertisement

Dubbed “ultrasound-induced hypothermia”, or UIH, the technology “represents a significant technological advancement in evoking artificial torpor,” according to a video from the team which accompanies the study. 



But despite this leap forward, there’s still a small element of mystery to the breakthrough. For many reasons, “ultrasound [is] a promising technology for neuromodulation in small animals, non-human primates and humans,” the authors note – it’s the only energy form strong enough to penetrate the skull without ionizing radiation and target brain areas with millimeter precision, for example, as well as being portable, safe, and relatively cheap. 

There’s just one problem, really: until now, we haven’t exactly understood how it works – or, as the researchers put it in more scientific terms, “its mechanism remains elusive.”

Advertisement

With the new study, however, we’ve gained a lot of insight. The technique works by aiming ultrasonic pulses at a region of the brain known as the preoptic area, or POA, resulting in the activation of neurons that trigger features of torpor such as reduced metabolic rate and body temperature. The effect was almost instant: after a 10-second blast with ultrasonic pulses, mice experienced decreased heart activity, lower oxygen consumption, a switch from sugar to fat metabolism, and changes in body temperature that suggested active heat dumping – all features of naturally-occurring torpor.

At first, this temporary torpor didn’t last longer than a couple of hours – barely a cat (or mouse) nap, really. But the team had another trick up their sleeve: they developed a closed-loop feedback controller that could automatically activate the ultrasonic beams whenever the mice’s body temperatures rose above 34°C (93.2°F) – the threshold for natural torpor in the species.

With this neat little addition, the researchers were able to keep the mice in their torpor-like state for up to 24 hours – all without any signs of damage or discomfort. Altogether, the technique “reveals the great potential of ultrasound-brain interfacing technology for noninvasive, precise induction of UIH,” the study reports. 

But there’s another, even more tantalizing, detail to the study. Not only did the researchers manage to induce a torpor-like state in mice, but they were also able to reproduce the effects in 12 rats – a species which doesn’t naturally hibernate at all.

Advertisement

It’s a result that raises some intriguing possibilities. If torpor can be induced in rats, could this technique be successful in humans, too? There are plenty of reasons why we’d want to try it – and not just as an excuse for more duvet days in winter. 

“The concept of inducing torpor-like hypothermia and hypometabolism by artificial means was initially proposed in 1960 […] to reduce energy consumption during long-term human spaceflight,” point out the researchers. “Torpor-like hypothermia and hypometabolism could also increase the survival probability of patients under life-threatening conditions […] by slowing metabolism and disease progression.”

So far, though, the technology to do it – at least, in a noninvasive and safe way – has eluded us. With the development of their new technique, therefore, the researchers at Washington University and their sleepy rodent pals may have broken through a barrier not just in biology, but in physics and engineering too.

“As ultrasound neuromodulation has already been demonstrated to be feasible in humans, UIH has excellent promise for translating to humans,” the researchers conclude. “UIH may unlock applications ranging from new medical treatments to long-duration human spaceflight.”

Advertisement

The study is published in the journal Nature Metabolism.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Canadian PM Trudeau not sorry for snapping at protester who insulted his wife
  2. Cricket-Kohli becomes first Indian to reach 10,000 runs in T20 cricket
  3. Congo’s $6 billion China mining deal ‘unconscionable’, says draft report
  4. Man Waggling His Willy At Leopards Found On World’s Earliest Narrative Art

Source Link: It's Possible To Create A Hibernation-Like State By Pinging Ultrasound At The Brain

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version