Abstract
On earth, gravity vector conditions the development of all living beings by physically imposing an axis along which to build their organism. Thus, during their whole life, they have to fight against this force not only to maintain their architectural organization but also to coordinate the communication between organs and keep their physiology in a balanced steady-state. In space, astronauts show physiological, psychological, and cognitive deregulations, ranging from bone decalcification or decrease of musculature, to depressive-like disorders, and spatial disorientation. Nonetheless, they are confronted to a great amount of physical changes in their environment such as solar radiations, loss of light-dark cycle, lack of spatial landmarks, confinement, and obviously a dramatic decrease of gravity force. It is thus very hard to selectively discriminate the strict role of gravity level alterations on physiological, and particularly cerebral, dysfunction. To this purpose, it is important to design autonomous models and apparatuses for behavioral phenotyping utilizable under modified gravity environments. Our team actually aims at working on this area of research.
Highlights
Why studying the influence of gravity on living organisms since it operates continuously in all living entities on Earth? Obviously this question is crucial for space exploration, but it brings with it an aspect of basic research to understand how gravity has participated in shaping the living
Life in other gravity context implicates modifications of social interactions, impoverishment of context stimulations, another management of exercise, increase of chronic and acute stress, and a change in gravity level. This is why we propose to understand how all of these parameters can interact by studying vascular and neuronal networks in animals living in modified gravity
In the same order of idea, after two weeks of 2 G centrifugation, only the initial phase of radial arm maze acquisition seems to be affected, this delayed acquisition being rapidly compensated by hypergravity induced hyperactivity (Mitani et al, 2004). This last result can be retained as the most relevant one as it takes into account a possible adaptation of the physiology to the hypergravity condition stress. In conclusion, it appears that hypergravity effects on learning and memory vary as a function of the duration of centrifugation, the level of gravity imposed to the subjects, and the behavioral paradigm in which they are tested
Summary
Learning on Jupiter, learning on the Moon: the dark side of the G-force. Effects of gravity changes on neurovascular unit and modulation of learning and memory. Gravity vector conditions the development of all living beings by physically imposing an axis along which to build their organism During their whole life, they have to fight against this force to maintain their architectural organization and to coordinate the communication between organs and keep their physiology in a balanced steady-state. Astronauts show physiological, psychological, and cognitive deregulations, ranging from bone decalcification or decrease of musculature, to depressive-like disorders, and spatial disorientation. They are confronted to a great amount of physical changes in their environment such as solar radiations, loss of light-dark cycle, lack of spatial landmarks, confinement, and obviously a dramatic decrease of gravity force.
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