If you've ever enjoyed a cold treat like ice cream, you've probably heard of a brain freeze.

Hey, you've probably even had one.

One minute you're enjoying your dessert, and the next you feel like your skull is squeezing on your brain.

The good news is that's not actually what's happening.

Medically, an ice cream headache, or brain freeze, is called spheno-palatine ganglio-neuralgia.

For those of us that don't speak Latin, that means pain in the nerves in your face, around your sinuses and the roof of your mouth.

When you eat something cold, tiny blood vessels, called capillaries, constrict and dilate, trying to make sure there's enough blood flow to the area, without exposing too much blood to the lower temperatures.

When this happens in the hard palate, it's picked up by nearby pain receptors.

If your brain freeze is mild enough, you might feel it in your mouth or sinuses, where the capillaries are actually being affected.

More often, though, an ice cream headache feels like it's actually in your brain.

This is a phenomenon called referred pain.

When a bundle of nerves is responsible for transmitting pain messages from several parts of the body, signals can get crossed, and it can feel like the pain is coming from someplace else.

This is what causes left arm pain during heart attacks.

In the case of brain freeze, the pain is referred from the roof of the mouth to the forehead and scalp.

And this pain is nothing to scoff at.

While a brain freeze normally only lasts a few seconds to a few minutes, studies have shown similar mechanisms may be responsible for certain aspects of migraine headaches, including sensory disturbances and pain.

In fact, if you get migraine headaches, you're probably more susceptible to ice cream headaches too...

Sorry.

Luckily, knowing what causes brain freeze can give us some clues about how to fix it.

You don't have to hide the pain, Harold.

The next time you get a brain freeze, try pressing your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

This can help increase blood flow and warm up the area, stopping the pain faster.

You could also try drinking something warmer than what caused the brain freeze, or breathing in through your mouth and out through your nose to pass warm air over the hard palate.

Or maybe slow down when you're eating cold things?

I know it's delicious, but it's probably not worth the pain.

Little scoops.

And one more thing!

I have a favour to ask you guys, because we're doing a PBS Digital Studios viewer survey over the next week.

And I would love to know who you are and what you like watching on YouTube.

And if you watch BrainCraft, please tell us in the survey!

Because surveys are fun and they're very useful and we can make shows that you guys will want to watch and enjoy in the future.

So there's a link down in the description, it will only take a few minutes and I would super appreciate it.