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Just a few minutes in low gravity is enough to change the brain in ways that could affect astronauts and their behaviour in space. The findings suggest that special preparations may be needed for space tourists or astronauts on missions to Mars.
Early this year, brain scans taken before and after 27 astronauts went on a trip to the ISS showed that, overall, their brains shrank, although some areas expanded. The astronauts were in space for up to six months, and these changes were more pronounced the longer they had stayed on the space station.
The overall shrinkage was probably due to a redistribution of the fluid that protects the brain and spinal cord. In space, the fluid is not pulled down into the body, which leads to increased pressure in the brain. The regions in which brain tissue increased were related to learning how to move in low gravity.
But it wasn’t clear just how quickly these changes occur. To find out, Floris Wuyts at the University of Antwerp in Belgium and his colleagues scanned the brains of 28 people immediately before and after a 3-hour parabolic flight.
The flight consisted of 31 parabolic manoeuvres, each of which included around 21 seconds of low gravity weightlessness. To combat motion sickness, the participants were given a scopolamine injection. A second group were given scopolamine and had their brains scanned but did not take part in the flight to act as a control. None of the participants had ever been on a parabolic flight in the past.
When the team analysed