Cortical dynamics of cold exposure and thermal recovery: Evidence from EEG-based spatiotemporal analysis

Human thermal perception involves complex and dynamic interactions between peripheral input and central neural regulation. However, the spatial and temporal characteristics of brain responses to different cold exposure scenarios remain poorly understood. In this study, we combined traditional analysis with AI-based anomaly detection to examine electroencephalographic (EEG) responses across five stages of cold exposure in 20 healthy participants, including baseline, cold exposure, wind stimulation, adaptation and recovery. Alpha-band power analysis revealed 14 EEG channels with significant stage-dependent differences, primarily located in the right hemisphere across frontal, central and parietal regions. Shapley additive explanations (SHAP)-based feature importance scores further validated stage-specific channels, identifying F8, T8 and CP6 for cold exposure, T7 for wind stimulation, T8 for adaptation, and F8 and CP6 for recovery. Time-frequency analysis revealed early spectral responses within 1 s for cold exposure and recovery, and within 2 s for wind stimulation, while AI anomaly detection estimated later latencies of 2.201∼2.735 s, highlighting the distinct sensitivities of each method. These results reveal right-lateralized, stage-specific brain activations, and demonstrate the complementary value of traditional and AI methods in decoding thermal responses.