Effects of Spaceflight on the Vestibular System

Clark, Torin K.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-05526-4_2

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Pilots must be able to react quickly to unforeseen and dangerous situations, even when the aircraft is tilted forward or backward or experiencing turbulence [20]. Similarly, astronauts must also be able to adapt quickly to unexpected situations while maintaining adequate visual orientation in a microgravity environment, where the body position is constantly changing and spatial cues may be unreliable [21,22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Impact of Body Position on Attentional Orienting

Soret,

Prea,

Peysakhovich

2024

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Attentional orienting is a crucial process in perceiving our environment and guiding human behavior. Recent studies have suggested a forward attentional bias, where faster reactions are observed to spatial cues indicating information appearing in the forward rather than the rear direction. This study investigated how the body position affects attentional orienting, using a modified version of the Posner cueing task within a virtual reality environment. Participants, seated at a 90∘ angle or reclined at 45∘, followed arrows directing their attention to one of four spatial positions where a spaceship will appear, visible either through transparent windows (front space) or in mirrors (rear space). Their task was to promptly identify the spaceship’s color as red or blue. The results indicate that participants reacted more swiftly when the cue correctly indicated the target’s location (valid cues) and when targets appeared in the front rather than the rear. Moreover, the “validity effect”—the advantage of valid over invalid cues—on early eye movements, varied based on both the participant’s body position and the target’s location (front or rear). These findings suggest that the body position may modulate the forward attentional bias, highlighting its relevance in attentional orienting. This study’s implications are further discussed within contexts like aviation and space exploration, emphasizing the necessity for precise and swift responses to stimuli across diverse spatial environments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Impact of Body Position on Attentional Orienting

Soret,

Prea,

Peysakhovich

2024

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Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making

Loued-Khenissi

Pfeiffer

Saxena

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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Does gravity affect decision-making? This question comes into sharp focus as plans for interplanetary human space missions solidify. In the framework of Bayesian brain theories, gravity encapsulates a strong prior, anchoring agents to a reference frame via the vestibular system, informing their decisions and possibly their integration of uncertainty. What happens when such a strong prior is altered? We address this question using a self-motion estimation task in a space analog environment under conditions of altered gravity. Two participants were cast as remote drone operators orbiting Mars in a virtual reality environment on board a parabolic flight, where both hyper- and microgravity conditions were induced. From a first-person perspective, participants viewed a drone exiting a cave and had to first predict a collision and then provide a confidence estimate of their response. We evoked uncertainty in the task by manipulating the motion’s trajectory angle. Post-decision subjective confidence reports were negatively predicted by stimulus uncertainty, as expected. Uncertainty alone did not impact overt behavioral responses (performance, choice) differentially across gravity conditions. However microgravity predicted higher subjective confidence, especially in interaction with stimulus uncertainty. These results suggest that variables relating to uncertainty affect decision-making distinctly in microgravity, highlighting the possible need for automatized, compensatory mechanisms when considering human factors in space research.

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Effects of Spaceflight on the Vestibular System

Cited by 2 publications

References 67 publications

Exploring the Impact of Body Position on Attentional Orienting

Exploring the Impact of Body Position on Attentional Orienting

Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making

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