Exploring internal body heat balance to understand thermal sensation

Abstract

A biological perspective is used to understand thermal sensation. The main premise is that thermal sensation serves an organism for the regulation of body temperature. A biological concept related to this premise is the physiological thermoneutral zone (TNZ). Within the TNZ the body can adjust body tissue insulation to maintain thermal balance and a stable core temperature. The approach presented here is based on the assumption that humans express neutral thermal sensation near the centre of their TNZ. To test this hypothesis, dTNZop is defined as the distance between measured operative temperature and the centre of the TNZ, and dTNZsk as the distance between measured mean skin temperature and the centre of the TNZ. The TNZ centre is calculated with a biophysical model using measured data from a climate chamber study with 16 female subjects. Regression between observed thermal sensation votes (TSV) and dTNZx revealed that the intercept corresponds with a slightly higher-than-neutral TSV and a strong linear relationship between TSV and dTNZop and dTNZsk. This approach shows great potential to improve the understanding of human thermal sensation in the context of physiology.