Abstract
Teams in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments face many risks to behavioral health, social dynamics, and team performance. Complex long-duration ICE operational settings such as spaceflight and military deployments are largely closed systems with tightly coupled components, often operating as autonomous microsocieties within isolated ecosystems. As such, all components of the system are presumed to interact and can positively or negatively influence team dynamics through direct or indirect pathways. However, modern team science frameworks rarely consider inputs to the team system from outside the social and behavioral sciences and rarely incorporate biological factors despite the brain and associated neurobiological systems as the nexus of input from the environment and necessary substrate for emergent team dynamics and performance. Here, we provide a high-level overview of several key neurobiological systems relevant to social dynamics. We then describe several key components of ICE systems that can interact with and on neurobiological systems as individual-level inputs influencing social dynamics over the team life cycle—specifically food and nutrition, exercise and physical activity, sleep/wake/work rhythms, and habitat design and layout. Finally, we identify opportunities and strategic considerations for multidisciplinary research and development. Our overarching goal is to encourage multidisciplinary expansion of team science through (1) prospective horizontal integration of variables outside the current bounds of team science as significant inputs to closed ICE team systems and (2) bidirectional vertical integration of biology as the necessary inputs and mediators of individual and team behavioral health and performance. Prospective efforts to account for the behavioral biology of teams in ICE settings through an integrated organizational neuroscience approach will enable the field of team science to better understand and support teams who work, live, serve, and explore in extreme environments.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Ronald Stevens, University of California, Los Angeles, United States Michael Rosen, Johns Hopkins Medicine, United States
These mechanisms are often associated with the basic functions of sleep-wake rhythms, many hormones relevant to team behavioral health and performance exhibit natural circadian rhythms, including cortisol, testosterone, and oxytocin (Amico et al, 1983; Haus, 2007), which could systematically impact team dynamics based on scheduling as an organizational-level input to an Input model of team dynamics (IMOI) team system
The first key is forming interdisciplinary research partnerships. These may be accomplished through top-down approaches as policymakers and research funding entities release calls for appropriately funded multidisciplinary research
Summary
Live, and serve in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments face many threats to behavioral health, social dynamics, and team performance over time (Landon et al, 2018). Subsequent sections describing team implications of food and nutrition, exercise and activity, sleep/wake/work rhythms, and habitat design include relevant biological mechanisms, and we consider potential pathways by which those factors may impact core neurobehavioral systems as individual-level inputs affecting team behavioral health and performance in ICE environments. On the opposite end of the sleepwake spectrum, sustained attention is critically dependent on the neurotransmitter acetylcholine projected from the basal forebrain to multiple areas of the cortex involved in sensorimotor and cognitive processing (Sarter et al, 2001) These mechanisms are often associated with the basic functions of sleep-wake rhythms, many hormones relevant to team behavioral health and performance (as described in subsequent sections) exhibit natural circadian rhythms, including cortisol, testosterone, and oxytocin (Amico et al, 1983; Haus, 2007), which could systematically impact team dynamics based on scheduling as an organizational-level input to an IMOI team system. Neural projections from the motor cortex largely discharge the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate, with the basal ganglia and brainstem regions projecting the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA), which disinhibits motoneurons, thereby allowing the release of acetylcholine to stimulate muscle activity (Sian et al, 1999; Grillner, 2015)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
