Whether in a deep burrow under frozen winter ground or aboard a far-future interplanetary spaceship, hibernation has long mesmerized sci-fi enthusiasts and nature lovers alike. But exactly how animals lower their body temperatures and metabolisms to enter this state has remained mysterious.
“Very little has been known about these mechanisms, especially the neuronal mechanisms,” says Takeshi Sakurai, a sleep and hibernation researcher at the University of Tsukuba.
Now, in a preprint posted on bioRxiv, researchers studying hibernating Syrian hamsters have pinpointed for the first time a brain circuit that regulates an animal’s entry into hibernation. The results reveal a “key, really, in the network” and provide “more solid [evidence] than anything we had before” of an ancient hibernation circuit within the mammalian brain, says Matteo Cerri, a physiologist at the University of Bologna who studies hibernation and was not involved in the work.
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