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Scientists Identify How the Body Senses Cold
Vicissidude writes with a link to a story on the Nature website, discussing the discovery of a protein that may enable us to sense cold temperatures. It's been pinned down in mice, and the same protein may perform a similar function in humans. Mice rely on a single protein, called TRPM8, to sense both cold temperatures and menthol, the compound that gives mints their cool sensation. The sensor also controls the pain-relieving effect of cool temperatures, but does not seem to play an important role in the response to painfully cold temperatures below 10 C. TRPM8 is in the same family as the protein that detects heat and capsaicin, the compound that makes peppers hot. These proteins lie in the cell membranes of select neurons, and form channels that open and close in response to external signals."
Literally cool, that is!
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
Where's the "off" switch? I freeze if it's below 80.
What?
The ability of simple chemicals to bond and form progressively more complex sensors and computation units shows just how primitive our top-down-engineered silicon computers are. Makes you wonder what our computers and I/O devices will be like when we get to the point where we really grok biochemistry.
Go somewhere random
I don't have any problem sensing cold temperatures. When your eyelashes and nostrils freeze shut when you blink or breathe, it is fairly obvious...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
licet differant, aequabitur
Below 10 C? 50 F? wow. If that's "painfully cold", I wonder how they'd describe the cold nights here at -35 F...
On a good note, below about -20 F, it all feels about the same.
Maybe now they can figure out a way to apply this to fix my wife. She is a frigid thing in many ways...
"This is America... where the will of the few outweigh the outrage of the many..." - Unknown
They talk about relieving the condition of experiencing cold pains when it is not really that cold. I know someone who may have had that, but I think she just had it because she was really skinny, borderline anorexic, and had no fat to insulate her.
The common cold doesn't really have much to do with the temperature or how cold people feel, except indirectly (see wikipedia).
Apparently this protein enables the body's reactions to cold including motivating feelings of numbness/pain in response to cold temps.
This must not be a one-size-fits-all type thing. I spent my first four Winters in VT wearing only light jackets even in the middle of winter.
Some research would be nice to discover if you can test for sensitivity levels. If so, it would also be nice to have someone incorporate that testing into a dating service. My (beloved) lady cranks the heaters all but about three months out of the year and it just might be the end of me.
I now have to wear heavy jackets throughout the winter to keep myself from going into shock over the temp differentials.
I guess you could incorporate this ability into research into Seasonal Affectation Disorder as well. I hear that motivates a good number of suicides every year, and treatment would inprove if you could show a quantifiable correlation between sensitivity to temperature and seasonal depression.
Regards.
Not to detract from the joke, but this isn't true on two levels. First, shivering is the response to a low core body temperature, not the "sensing" of it. Something else in the body is senses the drop in body temperature and triggers the shivering. It may be the way that the conscious brain "senses cold" but its not the way that the body does it. Second, this protein is not for detecting low body temperatures, it is for detecting "cold" surfaces and substances. TFA says this protein triggers at 27 C which is far too cold for use in the shivering mechanism (which triggers at about 35 C).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
> I'm trying to find a possible practical use of this research but can't think of any. Maybe in finding the vaccine for common cold?
Torture...uh, I mean the War On Terror(TM).
They've found the television remote?
Pain relief, then, perhaps
I wonder if it reduces swelling by tricking the body into restricting the blood flow to the "cold" area.
We are all just people.
50 F is not "painfully cold". In fact, I'm not sure I would describe 50 degrees as cold at all. Hell, 50 degrees won't even make me start to consider putting my shirt back on at Badger games.
The coldest temperature that I've ever been outside in is -60 F. That is air temperature. Who cares about the wind chill at that temp? At that temp, you leave your car running in the parking lot while you're shopping, you don't have a square inch of your skin covered by fewer than 3 layers, and you sure as shit better put your shirt back on while cheering on your Wisconsin Badgers.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I can already see where that would go: "Buy COLDPRUF and no longer feel the cold anymore!" *thousands of people buy it to withstand freezing cold workplaces* *some random fuckwit takes a BUNCH of it and freezes to death in ubercold winter* *lawsuit* *coldpruf and all deviations are made illegal* that's how it would happen
If creativity is the field, copyright is the fence.
I already have cold-proofing... some dry wicking base layers and a handy layer of fat.
:)
I detect the cold by checking the temp on the Weather Channel (or other weather related outlet)
I and my World of Warcraft character got very excited.
"I'm trying to find a possible practical use of this research but can't think of any."
you can turn off the cold sensitivity in my teeth any time.
And yes, I'll pay for the privilege.
Nerves in teeth other than pressure sensors. Dumbest idea ever.
...that I've been telling my wife for years, that when she's cold (which is always), she just needs some extra "protein."
;)
Men around the world, rejoice!
[ducking]
--- Shoo-be-doo-be-do-wop-say-what-yeah!
Nerves in teeth other than pressure sensors. Dumbest idea ever.
Best argument I've heard today against intelligent design.
Back when I was going to school we were taught that protein was just there to build your body and make it be what it is. Now we're learning on slashdot and otherwise that protein can carry a disease and infect things (BSE) and NOW it can even sense things? WTF, what's happening here? O.o
I don't really know why the above is modded funny... as a Canadian I agree 100%.
10 degrees C is not even cold at all. I don't even switch to my fall jacket until the temp. drops to 5C regularly. In fact I have slept outside in a tent in colder weather, with a summer rated sleeping bag.
Although the body fat content probably is a factor, I think this is more interesting in respect to researching pain management in general. Some people (regardless of fat) can not handle pain very well at all. Others can live with a great deal of pain with no medication.. For instance, many years ago I had a motorcycle accident which destroyed my knee, and had to have surgery to rebuild it.. I have been in pain ever since, but I have learned to ignore it, and don't think about it.., it is just the way it is.., and I don't take any medication for it.. I have met other people who stub a toe, and run to the emergency room for vicodin... Perhaps these proteins work harder in some people than others.. The people like this who can't handle the most minor of pains, end up as pill junkies if they are not careful. If it is possible that these people could be relieved,or at least be made to better tolerate pain without narcotics they would be a whole lot better off.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
....Nipples?
They're like pop-up thermometers in reverse. Very handy.
This could potentialy be useful. Imagine when they discover the gene for sensing heat. if we could genetically engineer humans to feel 35C to feel like 20. we could solve global warming =D or at least i wouldnt feel so hot right now.
makes me wonder if you can treat injuries with menthol instead of ice packs since the mice without the protein had less soothing from the cold.
I hope with this discovery we can finally start to close in on the actual source behind those confounding piss shivers.
that could be another cold-protection idea.... aka cheetos
If creativity is the field, copyright is the fence.
"injected their mice with a painful compound, put them on a cold plate and measured the amount of time the mice spent flinching their hind legs in response to the pain. "
You know, if mice ever undergo a genetic mutation causing them to become a dominant species over us, we are sooooooooo fucked.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
All the article states is that a certain protein has been identified as being crucial to the process. Perhaps this would be sufficient if I were in bio-med, but as it is, I'm not seeing it.
Insert self-referential sig here.
Presumably they mean that the proteins which detect it (and hence some part of your body) are at 10C and not the air temperature. How do you think you'd feel if your fingers were 10C? If both the surface of your body and the air temperature were 10C, I think I'd have to conclude you were dead...
Wikipedia has had info on TRPM8 and how it affects cold sensations since mid-2005, and I actually contributed with some content on the subject in the basic taste article in late 2005.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
to reach these conclusions? Stop animal torture and speciesism.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Last year on my second year medical course I wrote about TRPM8 being the cold receptor. It's on my course again this year as well on TRP channels in vertebrates AND mentioned in my course on nociception.
Not only is it not new, but it's not desperately interesting. Other receptors like TRPA1 are involved in properly cold sensation, it's thought, TRPV1 in moderate-warm sensations (thats what capsaicin stimulates to make food hot) and TRPV2 is thought to be for properly hot.
Any proper neuroscientist has known about TRPM8 for literally years, this changes very little!
"Cold temperatures" are noticably less than the body's acclimated temperature -- somewhere between 60 and 80, F.
"Fast speeds" are where we are moving faster than we typically do -- over 20mph on foot, or 15+ over the posted limit on a typical roadway.
"Far distances" are measured in time -- more than about 30 minutes travel time is "far".
Sorry, I wasn't clear on my critique; it was about the redundancy of the phrases, not their meaning. Cold, fast, and far require no use of the words "temperature", "speed", or "distance", since those are implied.