A daily head cooling habit might promote relaxation and boost mental well-being

Wearing a cooling cap for just thirty minutes a day tends to improve mental well-being and promote relaxing brain activity in young adults. A recent experiment published in the journal Acta Psychologica provides evidence that selective head cooling reduces depressive symptoms and increases brain waves associated with calmness. These findings suggest that this simple and non-invasive technique might offer a new way to manage everyday stress and mood challenges.

Selective head cooling involves applying a cold compress or specialized device to the scalp for a specific amount of time. Past research from this scientific team demonstrated that cooling the head and neck helps athletes recover faster from concussions. Zach Napora, the study’s lead author and a graduate student in the Sport Concussion Research and Service Lab at Pennsylvania State University, explained the origin of the experiment.

“It grew out of something we noticed by accident,” Napora said. “Our lab mostly works on cooling the head and neck in athletes after concussions, and while we were running those studies, people would try the cap and tell us it felt good and helped them relax. So, we put together a study to see if there was anything real behind those anecdotes.”

College students experience high levels of academic and social stress. This stress frequently leads to subclinical levels of anxiety and depression, meaning the symptoms are present but might not meet the criteria for a formal medical diagnosis. Both anxiety and depression can negatively affect a person’s cognitive function, particularly their working memory and attention. Subclinical stress is also linked to low-grade inflammation in the brain and impaired neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and grow.

Studies on animals indicate that brain cooling reduces neuroinflammation. Cooling the skin on the head might also send sensory signals to the brain that alter neural networks involved in emotional regulation. Mild cooling has also been shown in some studies to promote brain-derived neurotrophic factor. This protein supports the survival of existing neurons and encourages the growth of new connections.

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To measure these potential changes in humans, scientists use electroencephalography, commonly known as an EEG. An EEG is a safe and painless test that uses small sensors attached to the scalp to measure electrical activity in the brain. The brain produces different types of electrical waves depending on a person’s mental state.

Alpha waves are typically dominant when a person is awake but relaxed. Lower levels of alpha activity are often seen in people with depression or anxiety disorders. On the other hand, beta waves and high beta waves are faster electrical signals associated with alertness. High levels of beta activity tend to correlate with stress, worry, and panic.

The study included twenty-four college students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six. The scientists randomly divided these participants into a head cooling group and a control group, ensuring an equal number of men and women in each. At the beginning of the experiment, all subjects completed a battery of neuropsychological questionnaires. These surveys included the Beck Depression Inventory to measure depression, the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale to assess anxiety, and the Penn State Worry Questionnaire to evaluate general worry.

Participants also completed cognitive tests to measure their memory, motor speed, and attention. These included the Digit Span test, which requires participants to remember and repeat sequences of numbers, and the Trail Making test, which asks participants to connect dots as quickly as possible. Following the surveys and cognitive tests, each person underwent a three-minute EEG recording using a specialized nineteen-channel cap while resting with their eyes closed.

Next, the head cooling group sat in a dimly lit, quiet room for thirty minutes while listening to calming ocean sounds. During this time, they wore an active cooling cap that continuously circulated liquid coolant to maintain a temperature of thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit. The cap covered the entire scalp and parts of the upper neck.

The control group sat in the exact same environment and listened to the same ocean sounds for thirty minutes. They did not wear the cooling device. Immediately after this session, all participants repeated the psychological surveys, cognitive tests, and the EEG recording. To make sure muscle twitches or eye blinks did not ruin the brain wave data, the researchers used specialized computer algorithms to filter out those common electrical artifacts.

The participants returned to the laboratory every day for the next six days to complete their respective thirty-minute cooling or resting sessions. On the eighth day, the researchers administered the final round of questionnaires, cognitive tests, and EEG recordings to measure the longer-term effects of the intervention.

The data revealed a significant difference in brain activity immediately following the very first session. The head cooling group showed a roughly four percent increase in relative alpha wave power. The control group experienced a slight decrease of about half a percent in alpha activity during the same time frame. This suggests that a single session of head cooling effectively promotes a shift toward a more relaxed brain state.

Napora summarized the primary physiological and psychological outcomes of the week-long trial. “Over a week of short daily sessions with the Welkins Arctic cooling cap, the people who wore it generally reported a bigger dip in their depression scores than the people who just sat there, and right after cooling we saw a small bump in alpha waves, which usually show up when someone’s relaxed,” Napora told PsyPost. The participants who received the daily head cooling treatment reported a drop in depression scores of about five points, while the control group only dropped by half a point.

However, both groups reported a reduction in their depressive symptoms by the end of the week. “What surprised me most was how much the control group improved too,” Napora noted. “Those folks weren’t getting cooled at all; they just sat in a dim room with some ocean sounds for half an hour a day, and their depression scores still went down over the week.” Both groups also displayed an improvement in their cognitive test scores, which the authors attribute to a natural learning effect from taking the same tests multiple times.

The researchers also looked at a subgroup of eight participants who had a pre-existing diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder. In these individuals, the control group showed a trend of increasing beta and high beta waves over time. The head cooling intervention appeared to reverse this trend for the anxious participants, leading to a decrease in these fast wave frequencies. This observation suggests that localized cooling might help calm the hyperactive brain networks usually associated with clinical anxiety.

Readers should be careful not to overstate the implications of these findings. Napora highlighted a primary concern regarding how the public might view the results. “The one I’d really push back on is anyone taking this as ‘head cooling treats depression,'” Napora said. “Our participants weren’t clinically depressed; they were healthy students.”

He added that the trial was a starting point for future investigations. “The purpose of this study was really testing whether the whole thing was feasible, so it’d be a stretch to call it a benefit, and it’s definitely not something that should take the place of actual care,” Napora said. Several other limitations should be considered when interpreting these findings. The study relied on a small and relatively homogeneous sample of healthy young adults.

This small size restricts the ability to generalize the results to the broader public or to older populations. The exploratory data regarding participants with pre-existing anxiety also relied on a very small number of individuals. Those specific trends require further testing in larger groups.

The control group did not wear a room-temperature or deactivated cap. Because the participants knew whether they were receiving the cold treatment, their expectations might have influenced their survey responses. The lack of a sham device means the researchers cannot completely rule out a placebo effect. Future experiments should include a fake cooling cap to isolate the actual physical effects of the temperature from the psychological impact of simply wearing a device.

The researchers did not track external lifestyle factors like sleep patterns, diet, or daily stress levels during the week-long trial. These everyday variables can easily influence brain wave patterns and mood, potentially adding noise to the data. Future research will need to control for these outside factors to confirm the specific benefits of the cooling cap. Scientists also need to develop standardized ways to measure whether participants actually find the near-freezing cap comfortable to wear for extended periods.

The study, “Selective head cooling intervention improves mental health markers: A multimodal feasibility study,” was authored by Zach Napora, Maddie McLaughlin, Owen Griffith, Laura Cooney, Elle McNally, and Semyon M. Slobounov.