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Current Projects: NASA and National Space Biomedical Research Institute
Countermeasures to Neurobehavioral Deficits from Partial Sleep Loss
Principal Investigator: David F. Dinges, Ph.D.
The optimal performance of astronauts during extended-duration space flight depends heavily on achieving recovery through adequate sleep. This project will develop sleep schedule countermeasures to ensure neurocognitive performance capability in astronauts during prolonged space flight. Sleep is chronically restricted in space to 4h-6h per day for reasons often associated with operational requirements. Ground-based studies reveal that such chronic sleep durations result in cumulative performance impairments. The proposed experiment will establish the countermeasure benefits for performance from an acute increase in recovery sleep duration that occurs between two periods of chronic sleep restriction. In addition, generating sleep dose-response functions will provide needed information on the adverse performance consequences of an acute reduction in sleep duration, which can occur in space flight prior to a day of critical operations. A sleep-duration, dose-response experimental approach with randomization to condition will be carried out on N=80 healthy adults (n=40 females; n=40 males). Sleep duration dose will be varied parametrically on one night (0h, 2h, 4h, 6h, 8h, 10h, or 12h), placed midway between two 6-night periods of chronic sleep restriction (4h/night). The resulting dose response curves will quantify, for the first time, the degree of recuperation and/or further decrement of neurobehavioral functions relative to varying amounts of sleep following a period of cumulative sleep loss. In addition, we will resolve whether complete neurobehavioral recovery from chronic sleep restriction is possible within two nights of extended sleep duration. Subjects will be monitored for a wide range of neurobehavioral performance functions, fatigue and mood states, waking EEG, core body temperature, behavioral motility, cardiovascular activity and sleep PSG, while living for 17 days in a laboratory setting that simulates the low light, tight quarters and lack of social contact with the outside world, characterizing long-duration space flight. The results have the potential to fill critical gaps in scientific understanding of the impact of sleep duration on recovery from prior chronic sleep debt; inform and enrich biomathematical models of performance in space flight; and help identify the importance of the strategic use of periodic recovery sleep durations in the many Earth-based occupations in which chronic sleep loss poses a risk to health and safety.
Optical Computer Recognition of Behavioral Stress
Principal Investigator: David F. Dinges, Ph.D.
This project is focused on the early objective detection of neurobehavioral problems in space flight. The overarching goal is to develop an unobtrusive, automated optical technology to detect psychological distress (and the need for countermeasures for it) when astronauts are working during spaceflight. The primary aim is to determine whether optical computer recognition algorithms based on changes in facial expressions can discriminate behavioral stress induced by low versus high workload performance demands, and what influence facial edema, gender, age ethnicity and alexithymia have on algorithm discriminability. Astronauts are required to perform mission-critical tasks at a high level of functional capability throughout spaceflight. There are a number of stressors that can compromise their ability to do so. In order to provide timely countermeasures for stressor-induced impairments in astronauts, objective, unobtrusive measures of the presence of stress reactions - especially during performance demands - are needed. This project seeks to achieve such a measurement methodology, through continued collaboration between two laboratories: one with expertise in the evaluation of behavioral and physiological responses to stressful performance conditions, and the other with expertise in optical computer recognition of human expressions and gestures. The goal of this collaboration is to further develop and test an optically-based computer recognition algorithm of the face to reliably detect the presence of stress during performance demands. The proposed computer-based recognition system builds on the research of Prof. Metaxas by utilizing automatic optical tracking of human subjects' subtle anatomical and motoric changes in facial expressions during cognitive performance tasks. Video input to the system will be provided from experiments performed in the laboratory of Prof. Dinges, in which N=60 healthy adults (males and females of different ethnic backgrounds) will be exposed to laboratory simulations of varying degrees of workload-based behavioral stressors to develop a sensitive optical algorithm.
NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NEEMO/
This study aims to measure readiness and teamwork performance during the tasks designated for crew participants on the NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) 9 mission to be conducted in the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Aquarius underwater habitat in the Florida Keys . Aquarius is operated by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington 's (UNCW) National Underwater Research Center (NURC) program. NEEMO 9 mission tasks include extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) (i.e., activities occurring outside of the Aquarius habitat), telemedicine, and telesurgery.
Links:
NASA and National Space Biomedical Research Institute - http://www.nsbri.org/