[Central Circuit Mechanism for Psychological Stress-Induced Hyperthermia]

Many types of psychological stress induce hyperthermia. The stress-induced elevation of body temperature is caused by sympathetic responses including brown adipose tissue thermogenesis, tachycardia, and cutaneous vasoconstriction as well as by neuroendocrine responses including stress hormone release via the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Recent studies have revealed that the hypothalamic and medullary neural circuitry for driving these stress responses. In this circuitry, the dorsomedial hypothalamus serves as a hub for the central stress signaling: first, it connects the sympathetic efferents with medullary sympathetic premotor neurons to drive the sympathetic responses; second, it connects the neuroendocrine efferents with the HPA axis to drive the stress hormone release. The findings from the animal experiments would be relevant to understand the etiology of the chronic stress-induced hyperthermia "psychogenic fever", a psychosomatic symptom in humans. In this review, I describe the current understanding of the central circuit mechanism for the development of psychological stress-induced hyperthermia, incorporating recent important discoveries.