From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Sep 08 1999 - 10:17:54 MDT
On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, Gabriele Betti wrote:
> I'd like to know if there is a connection between temperature, brain,
> tumors(?).
The temperature of the human body is very tightly regulated. It is
known to decline a little during sleep (perhaps 1 degree) and if
it follows the pattern in animals, it would also be lower if you
are practicing caloric restriction (for lifespan extension).
Tumors, due to their higher metabolic activity, are warmer than
the surrounding tissue. It would however take a very large
tumor to raise the body temperature significantly. You would
raise your temperature much more simply by hard exercise.
> Could it be possible to make a connection between these factors and social
> behaviour?
If (and this is a big if) brains that had more connections had
higher metabolic activity, there might be a correlation between
brain temperature and how intelligent (or interesting a person
was). Tumors can in some cases cause behavior alterations but
brain tumors are much rarer than other forms of cancer.
Of course there is a significant connection between having
a brain and having a temperature. I suspect that people
like Jeremy Rifkin have neither. :-)
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:04 MST