Gizmodo has an interesting article out about a recent study out of Harvard that gives a new understanding about what causes ice cream ‘brain freezes.’ Now go buy some ice cream to celebrate experiment.
The results, which are being presented at the Experimental Biology 2012 conference, show that brain freeze is accompanied by a rapid dilation of the anterior cerebral artery, which floods the brain with blood and in turn causes pain. When the vessel constricts, patients report that the pain disappears. The researchers speculate that it’s a form of self-defense for the brain:
“The brain is one of the relatively important organs in the body, and it needs to be working all the time,… It’s fairly sensitive to temperature, so vasodilation might be moving warm blood inside tissue to make sure the brain stays warm.”
They also explain that, because the skull is rigid, an increase in blood volume in the brain causes an increase in pressure, which is what induces the pain.
