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The knowledge bank of ESA’s R&D programmes

Local sleep episodes during wakefulness and long term space travel

Programme
Discovery
Programme Reference
17/A/02
Start Date
End Date
Status
Closed
Country
Belgium
Local sleep episodes during wakefulness and long term space travel
Description

The aim of this study was to assess how space travel modifies local sleep episodes in wakefulness during a visuo-motor task and weather this is related to performance. To this end, specific EEG (electroencephalogram) data previously recorded on board the ISS during the Neurospat experiment (AO-2004, 118) were used. EEG markers of high sleep pressure can be observed during wakefulness, by increased theta activity (5-7 Hz), while asleep by an increase of slow wave activity (SWA) (0.5-4 Hz) (Cajochen et al, 1999; Finelli et al, 2000; Borbély et al, 2016), in awake humans alongside the sleep pressure (Fattinger et al, 2017b) and following sleep deprivation (Hung et al, 2013; Bernardi et al, 2015). Local sleep-like events were here detected and characterised (size over the scalp and density per minute) following pre-existing methods (Massimini et al, 2004; Fattinger et al, 2017b) in preflight (on Earth) and inflight (Space 1 and 2) conditions in five astronauts during a period from 250 ms before (i.e. motor action planning) and 500 ms after (i.e. maximal reaction time) a visual stimulus which indicated a manual tracking onset. Reaction times of the motor execution were also calculated.

Technology Domain
Executive summary