Surviving in a warming world: Cellular mechanisms of brain resilience to heat.

Over the past decades, extreme heat waves have become more common due to climate change. This resulted in hundreds of thousands excess deaths worldwide, a significant fraction of these being due to heat strokes that affect the brain. To understand how excessive heat cause the brain to malfunction, it is important to record the activity of individual neurons reliably, and to test whether glial cells, which support neuronal function and contribute to brain computations, help coping with elevated temperatures. We will acquire specialized electronic equipment to record the activity of brain cells exposed to increased temperatures. Our results will contribute to understand how to minimize the impact of extreme heat on the brain.