Cognition Tests the Impacts of Long-Duration Spaceflight on Astronauts' Brain Function

Little is known about the long-term impacts of spaceflight and other space stressors, such as microgravity, radiation, confinement and isolation. Now, scientists have created a cognitive test battery, known as Cognition, to test the impact of long-duration spaceflights on astronauts' brain function.

Cognition was designed to measure the impact of common spaceflight stressors on cognitive performance. It consists of 10 tests, and is currently more comprehensive than NASA's own current test battery.

"Cognition addresses, among other areas, spatial orientation, emotion recognition, and risk decision making, which we believe are essential for the success of exploration-type space missions," said Mathias Basner, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We know that astronauts are highly motivated and usually outperform the general population. The difficulty of the tests therefore had to be tailored to astronauts, to avoid both boredom and frustration."

Cognition is administered through a series of task via laptops and tablets. Currently, there are 15 unique versions of the 10 tests to allow for repeated administration in spaceflight. The researchers chose tests with well-validated testing principle and whose link to cerebral networks had already been well-established with functional neuroimaging, such as MRI. In addition, the tests themselves were optimized for astronauts.

"Long duration, deep space missions will undoubtedly challenge astronaut crew members in unexpected ways-including testing their emotional and psychosocial resilience and unconditional teamwork," said Graham Scott, NSBRI's Chief Scientist. "Neurobehavioral risks to the crew and mission can be mitigated by developing, testing and deploying highly sensitive and specific tools, such as Cognition."

The findings could be huge in terms of assessing what impacts spaceflight has on astronauts. This, in turn, could help astronauts better prepare for longer missions to locations such as Mars.

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