What’s So Important About a Body Temperature of 37°C?

More important, each reaction
in the body has an “activation energy” that is temperature dependent. Activation energy is the energy required to initiate a reaction rather than the energy (or heat) produced by a reaction. Moreover, activation energy can vary markedly from one reaction to another. Imagine the difficulty of performing coordinated movements and complex thought processes if the millions of reactions (with their different activation energies) required to perform these tasks occurred at different times as a function of varying brain temperatures. The emerging concept therefore is that the organizational complexity of the brain and the need for complex interaction of neuronal activity require homeothermy. In support of this concept, it is common knowledge that hypothermia is associated with drowsiness and confusion; and that elevations in brain temperature significantly impair mental performance (Engel et ale 1984;Hancock 1981). Although fever is associated with impaired mental processing, even a nontoxic rise in core temperature produced by exercising in the heat significantly increases the frequency of errors on an attention-stress test. Further evidence supporting the importance of homeothermy for normal brain function is the poor temperature regulation (as an example of neuronal processing) in the newborn compared with an adult.

This excerpt from: The Hot Brain.  Carl V. Gisolfi and Francisco Mora.  © 2000 The MIT Press.