In 2002 two controlled human studies stunned intensive care specialists by finding that cooling the body temperature 7 degrees helped prevent brain damage in patients whose hearts had stopped and been restarted after cardiac arrest.

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Maybe the part of the brain that manages metaphor switches off under a certain temperature and takes a while to reactivate?

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You know, years ago before we had all these vaccines, that fever, that temperature rise over a course of hours can insult a child's brain.

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Experiments by Andrew Gallup at Princeton University, his father Gordon Gallup and a colleague found that yawning is suppressed by a cool pack strapped to the forehead or by summer temperatures that are higher then body temperature, and that therefore the purpose of yawning may be to cool the brain by inhaling air.

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The dogs were clinically dead, with no heartbeat, respiratory functions, or brain activity, but their tissues and organs were perfectly preserved because the procedure lowers the body temperature to about 50 degrees F.

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Now, a study has uncovered a third part of the brain that, at least in mice, shows positive signs of neurogenesis: the hypothalamus, associated with body temperature, metabolism, sleep, hunger, thirst and a few other critical functions.

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