[Selective brain cooling]

Abstract

The brain is especially sensitive to heat stress. To limit the increase of intracranial heat in case of hyperthermia or fever, a system of selective cooling is put on. It includes two heat-exchangers. The first one, in the face and scalp skin, disperses calories through sweat evaporation. The second one is intracranial, close to the arteries which irrigate the brain. They are connected by a vascular network. In these conditions, the arterial blood temperature, of which cerebral temperature depends upon, is reduced by the cooled venous blood which comes from subcutaneous tissues through the skull wall. On feverish children, increasing such a selective cooling by face fanning can limit cerebral thermal stress.