Fever-like heat improves cognition in autism-model mice

A mouse that normally cannot solve a maze in time finds the exit when its body reaches a fever-like temperature. In experiments by National Institutes of Health researchers, juvenile Scn2a +/- mice faced a circular maze with 20 holes, only one of them an escape route. At normal temperature, the task was often not completed or took too long; at fever-like temperature, the mice located the correct hole quickly and successfully.

The same animals also became better at distinguishing a familiar object from a new one by touch. Behaviors such as repeatedly touching textured surfaces or interacting excessively with familiar objects improved after exposure to the higher temperature. The researchers focused on touch because sensory differences are common in autism and can help identify the brain regions involved.

The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, examined what happened in the somatosensory cortex, a brain region involved in processing tactile information. Near normal body temperature, neurons in the autism-model mice showed abnormally high spiking activity. When the temperature rose to fever-like levels, that activity moved toward normal. The researchers found that the spike threshold—the voltage needed to activate a neuron—increased most in neurons that became inactive.

The experiments pointed to potassium channels rather than sodium channels as a possible control point. Higher temperatures increased potassium currents, while blocking those channels inside neurons prevented the temperature-related rise in firing threshold. Drugs that enhanced potassium-channel activity, along with genetic tools used to control selected neurons, also improved tactile discrimination.

So what changes, concretely? The work separates the heat component of fever from the immune activation that produces it and offers a mechanism that could help explain temporary symptom changes observed in some autistic children. For now, the evidence comes from a genetically modified mouse model and behavioral and neural experiments; it does not show that raising body temperature or using potassium-channel drugs benefits autistic people.