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It was a simple question—deceptively simple, as it turned out: Can naturally occurring temperature fluctuations in neurons alter the cells’ synaptic transmissions? Some experiments suggest these signals might be heat-responsive. The speed at which mouse neurons release calcium, for example, is lower in tissue sections kept at 25 °C than in those at physiological temperature.
A few years ago, neurosurgeon Huan “John” Wang, then at Carle Hospital in Urbana, Illinois, approached Sanjiv Sinha, a mechanical engineer at the nearby flagship campus of the University of Illinois, about working together to answer that question. To do so, Sinha’s team would first need to figure out how to take a cell’s temperature. Some techniques for this already existed, but the researchers thought there was room for improvement. For example, one popular technique involving fluorescent molecules had a high margin of error and could be influenced by changes ...
