International Space Station

The impact of spaceflight on sleep and circadian rhythms

What happens to human sleep and circadian rhythms in space? There are many challenges that affect sleep in space, including unusual patterns of light exposure and the influence of microgravity. This talk will review the causes and consequences of sleep loss and circadian misalignment during spaceflight and will discuss how missions to the Moon and Mars will be different than missions to the International Space Station.

The effect of gravity on the perception of distance and self-motion: a multisensory perspective

Gravity is a constant in our lives. It provides an internalized reference to which all other perceptions are related. We can experimentally manipulate the relationship between physical gravity with other cues to the direction of “up” using virtual reality - with either HMDs or specially built tilting environments - to explore how gravity contributes to perceptual judgements. The effect of gravity can also be cancelled by running experiments on the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. Changing orientation relative to gravity - or even just perceived orientation – affects your perception of how far away things are (they appear closer when supine or prone). Cancelling gravity altogether has a similar effect. Changing orientation also affects how much visual motion is needed to perceive a particular travel distance (you need less when supine or prone). Adapting to zero gravity has the opposite effect (you need more). These results will be discussed in terms of their practical consequences and the multisensory processes involved, in particular the response to visual-vestibular conflict.

The effect of gravity on the perception of distance and self-motion

Gravity is a constant in our lives. It provides an internalized reference to which all other perceptions are related. We can experimentally manipulate the relationship between physical gravity with other cues to the direction of “up” using virtual reality - with either HMDs or specially built tilting environments - to explore how gravity contributes to perceptual judgements. The effect of gravity can also be cancelled by running experiments on the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. Changing orientation relative to gravity - or even just perceived orientation – affects your perception of how far away things are (they appear closer when supine or prone). Cancelling gravity altogether has a similar effect. Changing orientation also affects how much visual motion is needed to perceive a particular travel distance (you need less when supine or prone). Adapting to zero gravity has the opposite effect (you need more). These results will be discussed in terms of their practical consequences and the multisensory processes involved, in particular the response to visual-vestibular conflict.

The Amyloid Aggregation Study on board the International Space Station

Grip dynamics during object manipulation on the International Space Station