"We found that the students who were in the non-air-conditioned buildings actually had slower reaction times: 13 percent lower performance on basic arithmetic tests..."

"... and nearly a 10 percent reduction in the number of correct responses per minute... I think it's a little bit akin to the frog in the boiling water... slow, steady — largely imperceptible — rise in temperature, and you don't realize it's having an impact on you."

Says Joe Allen, co-director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University, quoted at NPR, in "Heat Making You Lethargic? Research Shows It Can Slow Your Brain, Too."

My personal intuition is that this study gets it right. Heat does slow the brain.

But I can't believe I have to push back a Harvard scientist about that damned frog-boiling myth. Here's an old post that (eventually) deals with the subject. It's just plain wrong that a frog will allow itself to be boiled to death if the water is heated slowly! The frog notices and jumps out. And maybe that's why heat slows the brain. You notice that you are uncomfortable, and it's distracting.

Secondly, I'm amazed that a climate scientist is producing pro-air-conditioning research and that NPR is passing it along.