{"id":221312,"date":"2025-09-02T08:27:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/rare-seasonal-brain-shrinkage-in-shrews-is-driven-by-water-loss"},"modified":"2025-09-02T08:27:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:27:02","slug":"rare-seasonal-brain-shrinkage-in-shrews-is-driven-by-water-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/rare-seasonal-brain-shrinkage-in-shrews-is-driven-by-water-loss","title":{"rendered":"Rare seasonal brain shrinkage in shrews is driven by water loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/rare-seasonal-brain-shrinkage-in-shrews-is-driven-by-water-loss.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Water cure: The study found that common shrews shrink their brains in winter not by losing cells, but by losing water.<\/p>\n<p>Brain scans: The team used MRI scanning, the same technology used in hospitals, to peer inside the brains of live shrews across seasons.<\/p>\n<p>What humans can learn: Brain shrinkage in humans is typically a sign of disease, like Alzheimer\u2019s. But shrews can shrink their brain without compromising function or causing damage. Shrews could become a model system for exploring potential pathways for medica treatment of human brain disease.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Knowing how shrews loose brain volume over winter is the first step to understanding how they reverse this loss and regrow healthy brains in summer.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mpg.de\/newsroom\/Brain\/en\">Brain<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Water cure: The study found that common shrews shrink their brains in winter not by losing cells, but by losing water. Brain scans: The team used MRI scanning, the same technology used in hospitals, to peer inside the brains of live shrews across seasons. What humans can learn: Brain shrinkage in humans is typically a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":701,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/701"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}