Do astronauts’ cognitive abilities decrease in orbit, where their bodies are exposed to numerous adverse factors? The new study found no major problems, but some changes do occur.
Astronauts in orbit
Space has a severe impact on the human body. The brain is also a part of the human body. And on the International Space Station, astronauts have to use it to its full potential. There are plenty of challenging tasks to do there.
At the same time, radiation, lack of gravity and 19 sunrises and sunsets per day don’t have the best effect on muscle tone and the work of the central nervous system itself. So don’t astronauts start getting kind of stupid in orbit?
This is the question that researchers attempted to answer in a paper recently published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology. For this purpose, they collected data on 25 astronauts who have worked on the International Space Station in recent years.
It’s all right
The first and foremost conclusion drawn by psychologists from comparing tests of astronauts on Earth and in space: there are no common signs of cognitive degradation that would last the entire flight and then not disappear.
A set of 10 separate subtests, each assessing a different cognitive function, told us more about the astronauts’ mental health. They were performed at the beginning and end of the flight, and 10 and 30 days after landing.
Tests have shown that the astronauts’ execution time increases during the flight. That is, they think much slower. But the accuracy of answers does not suffer in any way. The researchers note that the deterioration in attention was observed only at the beginning of the mission, and the speed of information processing did not return to Earth normal throughout the flight.
However, all this didn’t cause excitement among specialists, because these functions often fail even on Earth. Therefore, it is safe to say that everything is fine and space does not make you stupid. The results of the study are very important for future missions to the Moon and Mars.
Provided by phys.org
