Human adaptations to multiday saturation on NASA NEEMO

Andrew P. Koutnik, Michelle E. Favre, Karina Noboa, Marcos A. Sanchez-Gonzalez, Sara E. Moss, Bishoy Goubran, Csilla Ari, Angela M. Poff, Chris Q. Rogers, Janine M. DeBlasi, Bishoy Samy, Mark Moussa, Jorge M. Serrador, Dominic P. D’Agostino

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Human adaptation to extreme environments has been explored for over a century to understand human psychology, integrated physiology, comparative pathologies, and exploratory potential. It has been demonstrated that these environments can provide multiple external stimuli and stressors, which are sufficient to disrupt internal homeostasis and induce adaptation processes. Multiday hyperbaric and/or saturated (HBS) environments represent the most understudied of environmental extremes due to inherent experimental, analytical, technical, temporal, and safety limitations. National Aeronautic Space Agency (NASA) Extreme Environment Mission Operation (NEEMO) is a space-flight analog mission conducted within Florida International University's Aquarius Undersea Research Laboratory (AURL), the only existing operational and habitable undersea saturated environment. To investigate human objective and subjective adaptations to multiday HBS, we evaluated aquanauts living at saturation for 9-10 days via NASA NEEMO 22 and 23, across psychologic, cardiac, respiratory, autonomic, thermic, hemodynamic, sleep, and body composition parameters. We found that aquanauts exposed to saturation over 9-10 days experienced intrapersonal physical and mental burden, sustained good mood and work satisfaction, decreased heart and respiratory rates, increased parasympathetic and reduced sympathetic modulation, lower cerebral blood flow velocity, intact cerebral autoregulation and maintenance of baroreflex functionality, as well as losses in systemic bodyweight and adipose tissue. Together, these findings illustrate novel insights into human adaptation across multiple body systems in response to multiday hyperbaric saturation.
Original languageEnglish
Article number610000
Number of pages18
JournalFrontiers in Physiology
Volume11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Open Access - Access Right Statement

Copyright © 2021 Koutnik, Favre, Noboa, Sanchez-Gonzalez, Moss, Goubran, Ari, Poff, Rogers, DeBlasi, Samy, Moussa, Serrador and D’Agostino. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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