Given Memorial Day heralds the beginning of the season for frosty treats, this seems timely: File it under “Science is Fun," or maybe just “For Science Geeks Only," but a neuroscientist has explained the phenomena experienced after gulping down ice cold foods and beverages commonly referred to as “brain freeze."
Most of us get it--that sudden pain in your brain when you slurp your Slurpee or gobble your gelato on a hot summer day. Technically, it’s called sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia . “Brain freeze is really a type of headache that is rapid in onset, but rapidly resolved as well," explains Dwayne Godwin, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. “Our mouths are highly vascularized, including the tongue–that’s why we take our temperatures there. But drinking a cold beverage fast doesn’t give the mouth time to absorb the cold very well."
Quickly consuming something cold rapidly changes the temperature of the back of your throat. That’s the location of the internal carotoid artery, which feeds blood to the brain, and the anterior cerebral artery, which is where brain tissue starts. And while the brain itself doesn’t feel pain, the meninges, or outer covering of the brain can. So the rapid drop in temperature causes the two arteries to dilate and contract, and the brain interprets it as pain. “One thing the brain doesn’t like is for things to change, and brain freeze is a mechanism to prevent you from doing that," Godwin said.
To prevent brain freeze, Godwin suggests placing your tongue on the roof of your mouth to keep your throat warm or drinking a tepid beverage to moderate the temperature in your mouth. Or, you can stop drinking the icy cold beverage or eating the ice cream. But what’s the fun in that?
Most of us get it--that sudden pain in your brain when you slurp your Slurpee or gobble your gelato on a hot summer day. Technically, it’s called sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia . “Brain freeze is really a type of headache that is rapid in onset, but rapidly resolved as well," explains Dwayne Godwin, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. “Our mouths are highly vascularized, including the tongue–that’s why we take our temperatures there. But drinking a cold beverage fast doesn’t give the mouth time to absorb the cold very well."
Quickly consuming something cold rapidly changes the temperature of the back of your throat. That’s the location of the internal carotoid artery, which feeds blood to the brain, and the anterior cerebral artery, which is where brain tissue starts. And while the brain itself doesn’t feel pain, the meninges, or outer covering of the brain can. So the rapid drop in temperature causes the two arteries to dilate and contract, and the brain interprets it as pain. “One thing the brain doesn’t like is for things to change, and brain freeze is a mechanism to prevent you from doing that," Godwin said.
To prevent brain freeze, Godwin suggests placing your tongue on the roof of your mouth to keep your throat warm or drinking a tepid beverage to moderate the temperature in your mouth. Or, you can stop drinking the icy cold beverage or eating the ice cream. But what’s the fun in that?
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