Living in space can change your brain’s location in your skull – new research
Go to space Harsh on the human bodyand As a new study from Our research team findsThe brain moves up and back and deforms inside the skull after spaceflight.
The extent of these changes was greater for those who spent longer in space. As NASA plans longer space missions, and space travel expands beyond professional astronauts, these findings will become more important.
Why does it matter?
On Earth, gravity is constantly pulling the fluids in your body and brain toward the center of the Earth. In space, that force disappears. Bodily fluids move toward the head, giving astronauts a chance Puffy face. Under normal gravity, the brain, cerebrospinal fluid, and surrounding tissues reach a stable equilibrium. In microgravity, this balance changes.
Without the downward pull of gravity, the brain floats in the skull and is exposed to various forces from the surrounding soft tissues and the skull itself. Previous studies have shown that the brain appears higher in the skull after spaceflight. but Most of these studies It focuses on average or whole brain measures, which can mask important influences within different brain regions.
Our goal was to look closely.
How we do our work
We analyzed MRI brain scan Of 26 astronauts who spent different periods of time in space, from a few weeks to more than a year. To focus on brain movement, we aligned each person’s skull across scans taken before and after spaceflight.
This comparison allowed us to measure how the brain shifted relative to the skull itself. Instead of treating the brain as a single body, we divided it into more than 100 regions and tracked how each region transformed. This approach enabled us to see patterns that we did not notice when looking at the whole brain, on average.
We found that the brain is constantly moving up and back when comparing the post-flight phase to the initial flight. The longer a person stays in space, the greater the transformation. One of the most surprising results came from examining individual brain regions.
In astronauts who spent about a year aboard the International Space Station, some areas near the top of the brain moved upward by more than 2 mm, while the rest of the brain barely moved. This distance may seem small, but within the tightly packed space of the skull, it is meaningful.
Areas involved in movement and sensation showed the greatest transformations. The structures on either side of the brain moved toward the midline, meaning they moved in the opposite direction for each hemisphere. These opposing patterns cancel each other out in whole-brain averages, which explains why previous studies missed them.
Most transformations and deformities gradually return to normal six months after returning to Earth. Shifting backwards showed less recovery, likely because gravity is pulling downward rather than forward, so some effects of spaceflight on brain position may last longer than others.
What’s the next step?
NASA Artemis program It will represent a new era of space exploration. to understand How does the brain respond? It will help scientists assess long-term risks and develop countermeasures.
Our findings do not mean that people should not travel to space. While we found that larger shifts in the location of the brain’s sensory processing area were associated with balance changes after flight, crew members did not experience obvious symptoms — such as headaches or brain fog — associated with brain position changes.
Our findings do not reveal direct health risks. Knowing how the brain moves in spaceflight and recovers afterwards allows researchers to understand Effects of microgravity on human physiology. It could help space agencies design safer missions.
the Search summary It is a short overview of interesting academic work.
