Pharmacology of thermoregulation and adaptive behavior

Mammalian thermoregulation is the result of millennia of evolutionary interactions with challenging environments as it represents a core adaptive behavior crucial for survival, reproduction, and rest. This is achieved by controlling four main coordinated responses: endocrine, neuronal, metabolic, and immune, to address environmental and physiological variables such as motor activity, age, time, light, temperature, infections, food, and water supply.

Endothermal thermoregulation is an extremely dynamic property, with a relatively large excursus of inner temperatures still associated with physiological events and an amazing epigenetic capacity of slow adaptation to chronic changes. The effective reduction of body temperature could prevent stress or induce nesting behavior, while physiological increases could help respond to infections or be associated with pregnancy and circadian/sleep changes. The range of hormones, cytokines, and peptides controlling this composite series of events seems sufficiently conserved across mammalian species despite the large variety of body mass, metabolic rate, and nervous system development. This somehow justifies comparative research and the general assumption that effects could be translatable between small and large non-human mammals, and humans.

Recent discoveries in rodents have clarified the neurobiological aspects of this control, from molecular mechanisms of thermosensitivity to the role of immunocompetent cells in thermogenesis, the function of key endopeptidases, and the central neurocircuit controlling hibernation (via applied optogenetics).
Neuropharmacology has, however, provided limited breakthroughs in recent years, possibly due to the complexity of the matter or the lack of innovative clinical applications. This contrasts with current global challenges, including extreme ambient temperatures, metabolic diseases, the opioid pandemic, viral pandemics, and the ever-growing aging population. There is still much we can learn from other species: just thinking of case reports of human torpor and general adaptation to high plasmatic CO2 levels going unexplained, the interest in the control of hyperthermia in athletes, the still limited use of hypothermia for neuroprotection and finally the complex thermoregulatory changes associated with many chronic neurological and metabolic diseases and aging.

In this Research Topic, we would like to provide a comprehensive, integrated, and up-to-date approach to thermoregulation, collecting a series of reviews and minireviews tackling this large area from different viewpoints and dedicated research bridging between neuropharmacologic, behavioral, metabolic, and neurophysiologic observations across mammalian species, cellular biology, to provide potential grounds for advancing comparative neuroscience, metabolic models’ studies, and innovative clinical applications.
Prediction models across species will also be useful to understand thermoregulation as an adaptive behavior, refining previous research outputs and conclusions.

We welcome systematic studies applying novel or well-known techniques of temperature measurement, shedding new light on past works deserving renewed attention.
We particularly welcome the submission of Review and Perspective articles. Original data can be included provided sufficient space is devoted to the review of the chosen topic.

We encourage contributions addressing the following:

• Neuropharmacology of Thermoregulation;
• Thermogenesis and Aging
• Hormonal and Circadian Control of Thermoregulation
• Immune Reactions and Adaptation.

The mammal species of reference should be those with the largest body of experimental data, namely rodents, dogs, and non-human primates. Clinical data can also be included in the context of comparative research. Work done in other species will certainly be considered if justified by the topic and the specific aims of the contribution.

Silvia Gatti McArthur is co-owner of McArthur and Associates GmbH , a consultantship company in Basel Switzerland.
Aarti Jagannath is academic co-founder of Circadian Therapeutics, a biotec in Oxford UK
All other guest editors declare no competing interests with regard to the Research Topic.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Aging, Adenosine, Adipocytes, Cholinergic, Circadian, Clock Genes, Chlorpromazine, Epigenetic, Fever GLP1, Hibernation, Hypothermia, Hypothalamus, Hyperthermia, Interleukins, Leptin, Metabolism, Muscarinic, Mitochondria, Mechanoreceptors, Monoamines, Neuroprotection, Ovulation, Prostaglandins, Serotonin, Sleep, Stress, Sport, Steroids, Thermogenesis, Torpor, Uncoupling proteins

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.