Date: February 19, 2011

Title: ARES: Sleep, Stress, and Space on the Way to Mars

Podcaster: Maurizio Morabito FBIS with guest Dr. Angelo Gemignani

Organization: Omnologos Ltd.

Description: How can we counter sleep-derived stress in space?

Bio: Maurizio is an experienced electronics and computing technologist and scientist, and published journalist and technical and scientific author in English and Italian with a variety of interests, including the study of international relations, economic and social development factors, the energy sector and space technologies. Maurizio has recently been accepted as Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, the world’s longest established organization devoted solely to supporting and promoting the exploration of space and astronautics.

Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Omnologos Ltd, on its quest to find sponsors for a major scientific experiment on the International Space Station. And it is dedicated to Lorenzo: may you take me to the Moon, one day!

Transcript:

Hi and welcome to another podcast from Maurizio Morabito at Omnologos Ltd. Today we have a guest and our guest is Dr Angelo Gemignani, psychophysiologist in stress and sleep at the University of Pisa in Italy. Dr Gemignani has a very strong link with “space”, in fact he is one of the main researchers in the ARES project, “Astronauts’ Resistance Enhancement to Stress”.

MM- This is the same project that has seen people land on mars recently isn’t it Dr Gemignani?
AG- The project is the same and the aim of our project is to identify stress-related reaction, negative effects on sleep in order to identify specific changes in cognitive and emotional functions that are one of the first alterations that can jeopardise manned long-lasting missions in space.

MM- What is the evidence of stress for people that are in space?

AG- The main proof of stress in simulation conditions are related to alterations of circadian waves. There are also a lot of experiments that have been performed by astronauts in spaceflight simulators.

MM- Your project is about enhancing the resistance to this stress.

AG- The originality of our work is to study a specific wave during sleep, the so-called Sleep-Slow Oscillation. This wave basically is associated to sympathetic functions of sleep. And we are able to detect this wave by using EEG with 128 electrodes.

MM- So EEG is “Electroencephalogram”.

AG- Exactly. And sleep has a key role in the consolidation of memories and also in the sympathetic control of a lot of [vital] functions, such as cardiovascular functions and the immune system. And also the brain activity.

MM- You do not see or hear very often about sleep problems in space. Is it really such a big problem?
AG- Recently a paper published also by [researchers] belonging to [NASA] described that sleep alteration may be a crucial problem in long-lasted manned missions to space because sleep alterations or sleep disorders alter cognitive and emotional functions and in those conditions [such as] in extreme environmental conditions it is important to have proper cognitive and emotional functions.

MM- Do you know of any mission that has been put in danger because of this?

AG- Sleep changes or [to say it] better, stress-related effects on sleep are a general problem in Space Missions There is a lot of data described by h Russian Space Agency and the American Space Agency on sleep alterations in astronauts.

MM- Let’s go now to the enhancement bit. So how do you improve the situation, how do you make people sleep better I suppose without giving them sleeping pills that would put the mission even more in Jeopardy?

AG- The aim of our project is not to administer drugs because no drug has a specific effect on the Sleep-Slow Oscillation but we use a new approach based on electrical stimulation of the frontal lobes.

MM- So you’re giving electroshocks to the astronauts!

AG- No it’s not electroshock it’s a subliminal stimulation, electrical stimulation of the frontal lobes, and in 2006 in a seminal paper published in Nature German authors described that this kind of stimulation is able to reduce/increase Sleep Slow Oscillation and as [soon as] the day after, it’s associated to improvements in functions in subjects.

MM- What kind of current are we talking about then.

AG- The current is at 0.5Hz frequency, 0.256mA.

MM- You said it’s subliminal and it does sound pretty low. Do the astronauts or maybe better, the people have simulated the Mars landing, have they reported anything, any tingling, or any side effect of any sort?
AG- Up to now no side effect has been recorded, and in order to identify positive/beneficial effects of these stimulations, three Russian astronauts are using the stimulation, and the other three are not using the stimulation, in order to compare at the end of the mission the real effect of the stimulations. In order to avoid any confounding factor we used also a “sham stimulation” at 7Hz of frequency.

MM- “Sham” in the sense that you do not expect anything to happen because of it.

AG- Yeah.

MM- How are you going to verify the results? And when are the first results going to be published?

AG- We’ve actually got the first results obtained in the first pilot lasting one hundred days of stimulation and we are describing that the cortisol level, cortisol is hormone of stress, are related to a specific reduction of this wave, the Sleep Slow Oscillation, in the human cortex especially int he left hemisphere.

MM- What is the practical meaning of that, if the cortisol levels are lower, what is the practical effect?

AG- Higher levels of cortisol are associated to specific reduction of the Sleep Slow Oscillation in the human cortex and in particular in the left hemisphere and the left hemisphere as you know plays a key role especially in the cognitive functions. So we are not only investigating the specific effects on stress and sleep but also a “topological” effect on stress and sleep.

MM- “Topological”? What do you mean by that?

AG- “Topological” is related to specific cortical regions enrolled in the stress reactions. So when we study this kind of wave we are able to identify not only the structure of the wave but also the origins and the sections [included] in this wave in the human cortex. By applying correlation analysis, a simple correlation analysis, we’re able to identify a specific and negative correlation between the levels of cortisol and the reduction [of stress] in the sleep population in prefrontal cortex in the left hemisphere.

MM- Ok…we are approaching the end but I suppose you have some next steps presumably if everything goes ok your electrical stimulation is going to do all the way to Mars one day but what are the next steps for your project?

AG- We are organising together with our Russian colleagues the same experiment on the International Space Station in order to identify also the relationship between stress, microgravity and sleep slow Oscillation, because no data is present in the Literature or in specific reports done by the American or Russian Space Agency. The next project will be to study the Sleep-Slow Oscillation under microgravity conditions.

MM- Thank you Dr Gemignani and thanks to our listeners. Next podcast will be in around a month’s time.

AG- Bye bye. Thank you.

MM- Goodbye from Omnologos.

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
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