THE ZERO GRAVITY IS BAD FOR OUR BRAINS

NASA has pledged to send humans to Mars by 2030. This is an ambitious goal when you think a typical round-trip flight will last anywhere between three and six months, and the crew is expected to remain on the planet’s alignment for two years on the red planet. to come home. This means that astronauts must remain in low gravity for almost three years – which exceeds the current record of 438 continuous days in space held by Russian cosmonaut Valery Poulakov.

In the early days of space travel, scientists worked hard to learn how to overcome the force of gravity so that a missile could keep the Earth’s clouds alive so that humans could land on the lunar surface. Today, gravity is at the top of the scientific agenda, but this time we are concerned about how the loss of gravity affects the health of astronauts – especially their minds. After all, we exist within the Earth’s gravity (1 g), and not in weightlessness (0 g) in space or the micro-gravity (0.3 g) of Mars.

So how exactly does the human brain deal with microgravity? Bad, in short – although information on this is limited. This is surprising, as we know that the astronauts’ face turns red and aggravates during weightlessness – a phenomenon known as the “Charlie Brown Effect” or “Bird’s Head Leg Syndrome”. It is caused by the fluid that contains most of the blood (cells and plasma) and cerebrospinal fluid that goes towards the head, causing them to swell in the round face and feet.

These fluid shifts are also associated with space motion sickness, headaches, and nausea. It is also associated with recent blurring of vision due to increased blood pressure and the brain floats upward inside the skull – a condition known as visual impairment and intracranial pressure syndrome. Although NASA considers this syndrome the most significant health risk of any mission to Mars, knowing its causes – and the most rigorous question – how to prevent it remains a mystery.

So where does my research match? I think parts of the brain receive a lot of blood because nitric oxide – an invisible molecule that usually moves into the bloodstream – accumulates in the bloodstream. This causes the arteries that supply blood to the brain to become so loose that they open too much. As a result of this constant increase in blood flow, the blood – brain barrier – the “shock absorber” – may sink. This allows the water to accumulate slowly (a condition called edema), which leads to swelling in the brain and an increase in pressure which can be made worse due to a restriction on its drainage capacity.

Think of it like a river that is flowing along its banks. The end result is that sufficient oxygen in the brain is not quickly enough. This is a major problem that may explain why vision is blurred, as well as what other skills the astronauts have in mind, including the agility of astronauts in agility, attention, thought and gait.

A journey into the “comet vomit”

We needed to test it to see if my idea was correct. But instead of asking NASA to travel to the moon, we survived the gravitational link to Earth by simulating weightlessness in a special plane called the “vomit convict”.

Climbing and then sinking into the air, the aircraft “parboles” up to 30 of these in a single flight to simulate the feeling of being weightless. It only lasts 30 seconds and I must admit, it is very addictive and you will get a really swollen face!

With all equipment safely installed, we measured from eight volunteers who made one trip per day for four days. We measured blood flow in various arteries supplying the brain using Doppler portable ultrasound, which works by bouncing high-frequency sound waves from diffused red blood cells. We also measured nitric oxide levels in blood samples from the cell vein, as well as other invisible molecules that contain free radicals and brain-specific proteins (which reflect structural damage to the brain) that can tell us that Whether the blood blockage of the brain was left open.

Our preliminary results confirmed what we expected. Nitric oxide levels increased after repeated episodes of weightlessness, and this accompanied an increase in blood flow, particularly through the arteries supplying the brain’s back. This opened up the blood – brain barrier, although there was no evidence of brain damage.

We now plan to follow up these studies with more detailed assessments of blood and fluid shifts in the brain using imaging techniques such as MRI to confirm our results. We will also explore the effects of countermeasures such as rubber suction panties – which create negative pressure in the lower half of the body with the idea that it can help remove “blood” from the astronaut’s brain – as well as Also medicines for our universe.