Cognitive performance in ISS astronauts on 6-month low earth orbit missions- "Current & future astronauts will endure prolonged exposure to spaceflight hazards & environmental stressors that could compromise cognitive functioning, yet cognitive performance in current missions to International Space Station remains critically under-characterized. We systematically assessed cognitive performance across 10 cognitive domains in astronauts on 6-month missions to ISS.
Methods: Twenty-five professional astronauts were administered Cognition Battery as part of NASA Human Research Program Standard Measures Cross-Cutting Project. Cognitive performance data were collected at five mission phases: pre-flight, early flight, late flight, early post-flight, and late post-flight. We calculated speed & accuracy scores, corrected for practice effects, & derived z-scores to represent deviations in cognitive performance across mission phases from the sample’s mean baseline (i.e., pre-flight) performance. Linear mixed models with random subject intercepts & pairwise comparisons examined relationships between mission phase & cognitive performance.
Results: Cognitive performance was generally stable over time with some differences observed across mission phases for specific subtests. There was slowed performance observed in early flight on tasks of processing speed, visual working memory, & sustained attention. We observed a decrease in risk-taking propensity during late flight & post-flight mission phases. Beyond examining group differences, we inspected scores that represented a significant shift from sample’s mean baseline score, revealing that 11.8% of all flight & post-flight scores were at or below 1.5 standard deviations below sample’s baseline mean. Finally, exploratory analyses yielded no clear pattern of associations between cognitive performance & either sleep or ratings of alertness.
Conclusion: There was no evidence for systematic decline in cognitive performance for astronauts on a 6-month missions to ISS. Some differences were observed for specific subtests at specific mission phases, suggesting that processing speed, visual working memory, sustained attention, & risk-taking propensity may be the cognitive domains most susceptible to change in LEO for high performing, professional astronauts. We provide descriptive statistics of pre-flight cognitive performance from 25 astronauts, the largest published preliminary normative database of its kind to date, to help identify significant performance decrements in future samples."
1 NASA Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory, KBR, Inc., Houston, TX, United States
2 NASA Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory, JES Tech, Houston, TX, United States
3 NASA Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, United States
Sheena I. Dev 1
Alaa M. Khader 2
Sydney R. Begerowski1
Steven R. Anderson1
Gilles Clément1
Suzanne T. Bell3*
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