Study: Seventeen days in space does little to change brain power
According to a new study testing the vital brain signs of two astronauts before and after the seventeen day Axiom tourist mission to ISS in 2022, weightlessness and the space environment resulted in no sign of cognitive decline or changes in brain function.
You can read the paper here. From the abstract:
This study is a methodological demonstration of comparing cognitive performance and electroencephalography (EEG) brain vital signs in 2 astronauts before, shortly after, and 5 months following a 17-d mission to the International Space Station. Cognitive task performance remained consistent between pre- and post-spaceflight measures. Similarly, EEG brain vital signs revealed minimal change in the time-frequency domain. These findings suggest that short-duration spaceflight, combined with sufficient Earth adaptation time, showed no major decrements in cognitive and neurophysiological function.
Though it has been evident now since the 1960s that two- to three-week missions cause no lasting impact on the body or brain, this study documents a baseline technique for measuring the changes that might occur on longer flights.
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