Doctors develop brain-cooling helmet

"One of the harshest side-effects of a stroke or a cardiac arrest is the death of a large number of neurons and glial cells, which can often lead to other, hard-to-treat complications, making recovery long-lasting and painful. Doctors are now working on a new way of preventing that from happening, and, while the new method does not address the underlying issue – the damage to the heart – it does help reduce some of its effects. A University of Edinburgh PhD student from the UK is currently testing a 'brain-cooling' helmet that works by inducing a mild state of hypothermia to patients. Taking the old principle of applying cold bandages to the head in order to relieve headaches a few steps further, Bridget Harris, the researcher behind this initiative, devised a helmet of sorts that takes advantage of the intricate network of blood vessels on the scalp, which regularly transport blood to the brain. She argues that cooling the blood before it reaches its destination makes the temperature of the brain go down by as much as 4 °C, to an average level of 33 °C." _ Softpedia