Effects of microgravity on cognition: The case of mental imagery

Grabherr, Luzia; Mast, Fred W.

doi:10.3233/ves-2010-0364

Cited by 54 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…The peripheral vestibular system makes widespread projections to cortical centers involved in memory and spatial orientation, notably the hippocampus. 2, 3, 6, 10, 12–15, 19, 43–46 These projections may represent the neural basis for the association between vestibular and cognitive function. Stimulation of the vestibular system in animal models has been shown to produce increased firing of hippocampal neurons.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vestibular Impairment in Dementia

Harun¹,

Oh²,

Bigelow³

et al. 2016

Otology &Amp; Neurotology

104

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Objective Recent studies suggest an association between vestibular and cognitive function. The goal of the study was to investigate whether vestibular function was impaired in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) compared to cognitively normal individuals. Study Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Outpatient memory clinic and longitudinal observational study unit. Patients Older individuals ≥ 55 years with MCI or AD. Age, gender and education-matched normal controls were drawn from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA). Intervention Saccular and utricular function was assessed with cervical and ocular vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials (c- and oVEMPs) respectively, and horizontal semicircular canal function was assessed with video head impulse testing. Main Outcome Measures Presence or absence of VEMP responses, VEMP amplitude and vestibular ocular reflex (VOR) gain were measured. Results Forty-seven individuals with cognitive impairment (MCI N=15 and AD N=32) underwent testing and were matched with 94 controls. In adjusted analyses, bilaterally absent cVEMPs were associated with an over three-fold odds of AD (OR 3.42, 95% CI 1.33–8.91, p=0.011). One microvolt increases in both cVEMP and oVEMP amplitudes were associated with decreased odds of AD (OR 0.28, 95% CI 0.09–0.93, p=0.038 and OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.85–0.99, p=0.036, respectively). There was no significant difference in VOR gain between the groups. Conclusions These findings confirm and extend emerging evidence of an association between vestibular dysfunction and cognitive impairment. Further investigation is needed to determine the causal direction for the link between peripheral vestibular loss and cognitive impairment.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vestibular Impairment in Dementia

Harun¹,

Oh²,

Bigelow³

et al. 2016

Otology &Amp; Neurotology

104

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“…The overall evidence presented strongly supports the thesis that bodily felt gravity influences spatial reasoning. Further results suggest that even some other cognitive tasks, such as face recognition, may be impaired, while performance for others, like same-different judgments for abstract objects, are unaffected by microgravity (see Grabherr and Mast, 2010 for more details).…”

Section: Gravity Information In Vision Related Processing: What Is Itmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gravity as a Strong Prior: Implications for Perception and Action

Jörges

López‐Moliner

2017

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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In the future, humans are likely to be exposed to environments with altered gravity conditions, be it only visually (Virtual and Augmented Reality), or visually and bodily (space travel). As visually and bodily perceived gravity as well as an interiorized representation of earth gravity are involved in a series of tasks, such as catching, grasping, body orientation estimation and spatial inferences, humans will need to adapt to these new gravity conditions. Performance under earth gravity discrepant conditions has been shown to be relatively poor, and few studies conducted in gravity adaptation are rather discouraging. Especially in VR on earth, conflicts between bodily and visual gravity cues seem to make a full adaptation to visually perceived earth-discrepant gravities nearly impossible, and even in space, when visual and bodily cues are congruent, adaptation is extremely slow. We invoke a Bayesian framework for gravity related perceptual processes, in which earth gravity holds the status of a so called “strong prior”. As other strong priors, the gravity prior has developed through years and years of experience in an earth gravity environment. For this reason, the reliability of this representation is extremely high and overrules any sensory information to its contrary. While also other factors such as the multisensory nature of gravity perception need to be taken into account, we present the strong prior account as a unifying explanation for empirical results in gravity perception and adaptation to earth-discrepant gravities.

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“…The environmental factors entailed in spaceflight reportedly affect human physiological and psychological functions [1–4]. Life during spaceflight includes multiple stressful environmental factors, such as microgravity, radiation, loss of light-dark cycle, and confinement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of gravity changes on gene expression of BDNF and serotonin receptors in the mouse brain

Ishikawa

Ogura

et al. 2017

PLoS ONE

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Spaceflight entails various stressful environmental factors including microgravity. The effects of gravity changes have been studied extensively on skeletal, muscular, cardiovascular, immune and vestibular systems, but those on the nervous system are not well studied. The alteration of gravity in ground-based animal experiments is one of the approaches taken to address this issue. Here we investigated the effects of centrifugation-induced gravity changes on gene expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and serotonin receptors (5-HTRs) in the mouse brain. Exposure to 2g hypergravity for 14 days showed differential modulation of gene expression depending on regions of the brain. BDNF expression was decreased in the ventral hippocampus and hypothalamus, whereas increased in the cerebellum. 5-HT1BR expression was decreased in the cerebellum, whereas increased in the ventral hippocampus and caudate putamen. In contrast, hypergravity did not affect gene expression of 5-HT1AR, 5-HT2AR, 5-HT2CR, 5-HT4R and 5-HT7R. In addition to hypergravity, decelerating gravity change from 2g hypergravity to 1g normal gravity affected gene expression of BDNF, 5-HT1AR, 5-HT1BR, and 5-HT2AR in various regions of the brain. We also examined involvement of the vestibular organ in the effects of hypergravity. Surgical lesions of the inner ear’s vestibular organ removed the effects induced by hypergravity on gene expression, which suggests that the effects of hypergravity are mediated through the vestibular organ. In summary, we showed that gravity changes induced differential modulation of gene expression of BDNF and 5-HTRs (5-HT1AR, 5-HT1BR and 5-HT2AR) in some brain regions. The modulation of gene expression may constitute molecular bases that underlie behavioral alteration induced by gravity changes.

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Effects of microgravity on cognition: The case of mental imagery

Cited by 54 publications

References 61 publications

Vestibular Impairment in Dementia

Vestibular Impairment in Dementia

Gravity as a Strong Prior: Implications for Perception and Action

Effects of gravity changes on gene expression of BDNF and serotonin receptors in the mouse brain

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