There’s a lot to keep track of when you work in space
NASA
Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) experienced reduced memory, attention and processing speed after six months, raising concerns about the impact of cognitive impairment on future space missions to Mars.
The extreme environment of space, with its reduced gravity, harsh radiation and lack of regular sunrises and sunsets, can have devastating effects on the health of astronauts, muscle loss to increase risk of heart disease. However, the cognitive effects of long-term space travel are less well documented.
now, Sheena Dev At NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and colleagues analyzed the cognitive performance of 25 astronauts during their time on the ISS.
The team gave the astronauts the same set of 10 tests both on Earth and on the ISS. These were repeated once before the mission, twice during and twice after, 10 and 30 days after landing. These tests measured a number of cognitive abilities, such as finding patterns in a grid to test abstract reasoning or choosing when to stop an inflated balloon for a risk-taking test.
The researchers found that astronauts performed tests measuring processing speed, working memory and attention faster than on Earth, but were just as accurate. While there was no overall cognitive impairment or lasting effect on the astronauts’ abilities, some measures, such as processing speed, took longer to return to normal when they returned to Earth.
He says Elisa Raffaella Ferrè at Birkbeck, University of London, but it will be important to collect more data, both on Earth and in space, before we know the full picture.
“A mission to Mars is longer not only in terms of time, but also in terms of autonomy,” says Ferrè. “The people there will have a completely different interaction with ground control because of the distance and communication delays, so they will have to be completely autonomous in their decision-making, so human performance will be key. You certainly don’t want astronauts on Mars who have slow reaction times, whether it’s in terms of attention-related tasks or memory or processing speed.”
It’s not surprising that there are some definite reductions in cognitive performance given the unusual environment of space, he says Jo Bower at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. “It’s not necessarily a huge cause for alarm, but it’s something that’s useful to be aware of, especially when you’re in these extreme environments so you know your limits,” he says.
That awareness can be especially helpful for astronauts on longer missions, Bower added. “It’s not just how you do on those tests, it’s also what your perception of your ability is,” he says. “We know that if you’re sleep-deprived, for example, your performance will often go down, but you won’t notice that your performance has gone down.”
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