Astronauts may have vision problems because of liquid in their brains

NASA

By Leah Crane

Going to home adjustments your mind. Astronauts who occupy spent months in microgravity occupy more liquid in their brains, that will occupy an impression on their vision even after they procure inspire home.

On Earth, gravity pulls your complete bodily fluids down towards your toes. In home, that’s now not the case. “As soon as you enter microgravity, bodily fluids drift to the better share of the body,” says Angelique Van Ombergen at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. “That’s why when you happen to appear at photos of astronauts on the home location they watch bask in they occupy got a puffy head.”

Van Ombergen and her colleagues scanned the brains of 11 Russian cosmonauts earlier than and after going to home to decide the results of microgravity on the mind’s ventricles – chambers that preserve cerebrospinal fluid.

They found that once the cosmonauts returned home, the quantity of their ventricles had increased by a median of greater than 11 per cent to accommodate the extra fluid flowing into their heads in microgravity. Even about seven months later, the ventricles were greater than 6 per cent greater than earlier than the cosmonauts launched.

It is now not yet certain what results this would want on mind arrangement. The team found a correlation between the quantity of undoubtedly one of the most four ventricles and loss of visual acuity, however it become once now not steady ample to make certain the inflated ventricle become once the truth is inflicting the adjustments in vision which would possibly perhaps perchance be a total criticism for astronauts.

The truth that there are adjustments within the mind need to quiet inspire further behold, Van Ombergen says. The total cosmonauts in this behold were in home for about six months, so we don’t know if the make gets more pronounced the longer they employ in microgravity – a first-rate consideration for longer flights, equivalent to a dash to Mars. They were also all men, and Ombergen says there’s of endeavor the make would possibly perhaps perchance be lots of in ladies folks.

“We now occupy got to the truth is verify the mind, verify the visual machine, verify cognition because we make now not know if this has any make on that, and verify these who spent lots of durations in home to issue if the make keeps increasing,” says Van Ombergen. “Currently, no one knows.”

Journal reference: Courtroom cases of the National Academy of Sciences , DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1820354116