Growing concern (and hope) about astronauts’ cognitive health during spaceflight

NASA astro­naut Scott Kel­ly checks out the Microsoft HoloLens aboard a space sta­tion on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2016. (Pho­to by NASA via Get­ty Images)

About the con­cern: Brain MRI scans may help NASA plan safer mis­sions to space (Health Imaging):

“Not a lot is known about cog­ni­tive impair­ment in humans dur­ing space­flight,” Don­na R. Roberts, MD, Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty of South Carolina’s Depart­ment of Radi­ol­o­gy, said in a state­ment … Roberts found “wide­spread” changes in brain struc­ture that cor­re­lat­ed with changes in cog­ni­tive per­for­mance and motor skills.

The long-term effects of these brain changes remains unknown, the authors wrote, but based on the find­ings, Roberts argued that NASA needs to change its med­ical protocol…

“These find­ings sug­gest that the brain changes seen with micro­grav­i­ty have mea­sur­able behav­ioral con­se­quences,” Roberts and col­leagues explained in the study. “While observed in a rel­a­tive­ly small sam­ple, with some vari­a­tion based on astro­naut demo­graph­ics, these results may have major health sig­nif­i­cance that should be con­sid­ered in space­flight pol­i­cy and planning.”

The full study was pub­lished online in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Neuroradiology.

About the hope: How VR, AR could sup­port astro­nauts’ men­tal health in space (Mobi­Health News):

“Spend­ing three years in an enclosed space­craft with less than a hand­ful of com­pan­ions is a daunt­ing task — not just phys­i­cal­ly but psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er, that will be the real­i­ty for the crew going to Mars, a trip which is slat­ed for some time in the next two decades … Aug­ment­ed and vir­tu­al real­i­ty con­tin­u­ous­ly resur­faced at the con­fer­ence as a way to address astro­nauts’ men­tal well­be­ing dur­ing the three-year jour­ney to Mars…

“In addi­tion to just mood, we need to think about what is the phys­i­o­log­i­cal impact. What does the radi­a­tion do to cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral func­tion, what does it do to the immune func­tion,” Fab­re said (Edi­tor’s Note: Kristin Fab­re, senior inno­va­tion sci­en­tist at Trans­la­tion­al Research Insti­tute for Space Health). “So, when we are look­ing at a lot of these tech­nolo­gies to gauge cog­ni­tive or behav­ioral well­be­ing, we would also like to have a phys­i­o­log­i­cal ele­ment to it as well. So, tying in mon­i­tor­ing or diag­nos­ing to what is hap­pen­ing on the phys­i­o­log­i­cal level.”

News in Context:

• When fly­ing to Mars, make sure to mon­i­tor and enhance brain func­tion (radi­a­tion expo­sure can hurt performance)