Afferent adaptation delays thermoregulatory shutdown

This proposed mechanism asks whether fading cold signals can delay the body’s shutdown of sweating and skin blood flow after cooling. It proposes that cold-sensitive afferents, sensory nerve fibres carrying temperature information to the central nervous system, adapt after the first of two cooling transitions. The second may be weakly encoded, giving temperature control an incomplete signal of continuing cooling and delaying shutdown or reactivating the response. The decisive test would match local sweat-gland temperature and total external heat exposure, then apply a brief temperature signal to remote skin during the second transition. Timely shutdown would support this sensory-coding hypothesis; persistent signalling inside isolated sweat-gland cells predicts no such rescue.