The Effects Of Space Travel On The Brain Dementia Researcher

Today is the UK Space Agency Mars Day, it celebrates the 6th anniversary of the launch of the first ExoMars mission, and a year since NASA’s Perseverance rover started exploring Mars. In just three years’ time NASA aims to return humans to the Moon as part of the Artemis Mission, and in just a decade it’s onward to the surface of Mars – the tech and engineering may be ready, but are we?

Being in space has well-documented negative effects on the body. But the effect of being in space on the brain has been studied less. In this podcast Dr Yvonne Couch, ARUK Research Fellow at University of Oxford hosts a discussion with three world leading experts to explore the effects of space travel on the brain.

We’re joined by Chris Mason, Professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine, USA. Chris is one of the people behind the landmark Twins Study that followed identical twins Scott and Mark Kelly, while one spent a year on earth and the other spent a year in space – he works with NASA, runs multiple labs, and utilises computational and experimental methodologies to identify and characterise the essential genetic elements that guide the function of the human genome, with a particular emphasis on the elements that orchestrate the development of the human brain. Chris has also written a fantastic book ‘The Next 500 Years’ about our future in space.

Next we have Dr Iya Whiteley, Space Psychologist and Director of the Centre for Space Medicine at Mullard Space Science Laboratory, at University College London. Dr Whiteley works with the European Space Agency is a trained Astronaut Instructor and has published several papers about fatigue in astronauts. She helps develop tools to support crew autonomous operations in complex human spacecraft and works at the cutting edge of psychological support of astronauts going to the moon and mars. Iya is also the author of a new book titled “Toolkit for a Space Psychologist - to support astronauts in exploration missions to the Moon and Mars”

Last by far from least we have the unstoppable Henrik Zetterberg, Professor of Neurochemistry and neurodegenerative disease expert at University College London and the University of Gothenburg. Henrik is a leading expert in fluid based biomarkers in dementia, and in 2020 he discovered a new method to detect the disease about two decades before significant symptoms are present. In this show he does an amazing job of keeping the show on track as we explore radiation, gravity, psychology, food, sleep and everything that makes astronauts ‘Super Human’, or are they?

The Next 500 Years – https://amzn.to/3t2iCV1

Toolkit for a Space Psychologist – https://amzn.to/3CGmTAE

Twins Study - https://www.nasa.gov/twins-study

More on Mars Day - https://marsday.org.uk/

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You can find out more about our guests, and access a full transcript of this podcast on our website at:

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/podcast

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This podcast is brought to you in association with Alzheimer's Research UK and Alzheimer's Society, who we thank for their ongoing support.