91��ɫ-led findings show astronauts can safely assess distances in weightless environment

TORONTO, March 25 2024 – New research led by 91��ɫ finds .

The findings of the study, done in collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency and NASA, have implications for crew safety in space and could potentially give clues to how aging affects people’s balance systems here on Earth, says the study’s lead Faculty of Health Professor .

“It has been repeatedly shown that the perception of gravity influences perceptual skill. The most profound way of looking at the influence of gravity is to take it away, which is why we took our research into space,” says Harris, an expert on vision and the perception of motion who also heads up the Multisensory Integration Lab and is the former director of the at 91��ɫ.

“We’ve had a steady presence for close to a quarter century in space and with space efforts only increasing as we plan to go back to the moon and beyond, answering health-and-safety questions only becomes more important. Based on our findings it seems as though humans are surprisingly able to compensate adequately for the lack of an Earth-normal environment using vision.”

Harris and collaborators – who include Lassonde School of Engineering professors Robert Allison and Michael Jenkin, and two generations of 91��ɫ post docs and graduate students Björn Jörges, Nils Bury, Meaghan McManus and Ambika Bansal – studied a dozen astronauts aboard the International Space Station, which orbits about 400 kilometres from the Earth’s surface. Here, Earth's gravity is approximately cancelled out by centrifugal force generated by the orbiting of the station. In the resulting microgravity, the way people move is more like flying, says Harris.

“People have previously anecdotally reported that they felt they were moving faster or further than they really were in space, so this provided some motivation to actually record this,” he explains.

The researchers compared the performance of a dozen astronauts – six men and six women – before, during, and after their year-long missions to the space station and found that their sense of how far they travelled remained largely intact.

Space missions are busy endeavours and it took the researchers several days to connect with the astronauts once they arrived at the space station. Harris says that it’s possible their research was unable to capture early adaptation that may have occurred in those first few days, “it's still a good news message because it says that whatever adaptation happens, happens very quickly.”

Space missions are not without risk. As the ISS orbits the Earth it is sometimes hit with small objects that could penetrate the vessel requiring astronauts to move to safety.

“On a number of occasions during our experiment, the ISS had to perform evasive maneuvers,” recalls Harris. “Astronauts need to be able to go to safe places or escape hatches on the ISS quickly and efficiently in an emergency. So, it was very reassuring to find that they were actually able to do this quite precisely.”

The study, published recently in npj Microgravity, has been a decade in the making, and represents the first of three papers that will emerge from the research investigating the effects of microgravity exposure on different perceptual skills including the estimation of body tilt, travelled distance, and object size.

Harris says research shows exposure to microgravity mimics the aging process on a largely physiological level  – wasting of bones and muscles, changes in hormonal functioning and increased susceptibility to infection  – but this paper finds that self-motion is largely unaffected, suggesting the balance issues that frequently come from old age may not be related to the vestibular system.

“It suggests that the mechanism for the perception of movement in older people should be relatively unaffected, and that the issues involved in falling may not be so much in terms of the perception of how far they've moved, but perhaps more to do with how they're able to convert that into a balance reflex.”

About 91��ɫ

91��ɫ is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change, and prepare our students for success. 91��ɫ’s fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario’s Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. 91��ɫ’s campuses in Costa Rica and India offer students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future.

Media Contacts: Emina Gamulin, 91��ɫ Media Relations and External Communications, 437-217-6362, egamulin@yorku.ca

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TORONTO, November 28, 2018 – Canadian Space Agency astronaut is launching to the ISS on Dec. 3, and soon after his arrival, some important research from 91��ɫ Professor will begin. This effort could one day help research in the areas of Parkinson’s disease, stroke recovery, damaged organs, aging and remote robots used for surgery.

Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques is performing 91��ɫ's virtual reality experiment before his Dec. 3, 2018 space mission.

Harris is leading a virtual reality experiment, some equipment for which recently travelled to the  (ISS) on NASA’s Northrop Grumman’s commercial resupply mission. While Harris will remain on earth, his research will investigate the effects of microgravity on astronauts’ perception of their motion.

“It is vital for us to understand how we perceive information in space,” says Harris, a professor of psychology in the Faculty of Health and director of 91��ɫ’s Centre for Vision Research. “We want to see how going on long space flights will impact an astronaut’s perception of motion. Our ultimate goal is to develop a model of an astronaut’s  and body position and how the perceived distance to objects changes in space.”

The experiment is a collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency. It is aptly named , which is the feeling that you are in motion caused by seeing the visual scene moving, even while you are immobile.

The VECTION research team is led by Professor Harris, and including Professors and from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 91��ɫ’s Lassonde School of Engineering, as well as postdoctoral student Nils Bury and graduate student Meaghan McManus. They want to learn how visual information creates the feeling of self-motion in weightlessness. They also want to examine whether astronauts' perception of their surroundings is affected by weightlessness and create a model of how space impacts the way we process visual information. Their experiment may also enhance medical research focused on finding potential treatments for diseases, enhancing medical procedures and improving the quality of life for people who are sick.

“This experiment may be the missing piece of the puzzle to help us better understand disorders that affect movement and posture like Parkinson's disease,” says Harris. “Virtual reality applications may help people recovering from a stroke or with damage to the sense organs that help with balance. Perhaps this research will give us deeper knowledge of the effects of aging on perception or how to improve technologies like remotely-operated robots used in surgery.”

The experiments will take place aboard the ISS and will be supported by control experiments conducted on earth at 91��ɫ. Saint-Jacques will be the first crew member to take part in the experiment.

While in space, each astronaut will do three focused on three areas of study – the perception of orientation after accelerating motion, the perception of self-motion, and the perception of distance. Each experiment will involve the astronauts being lightly held in a to stop them drifting into the walls of the ISS while wearing a virtual reality head mounted display (HMD), ear plugs, and a neck brace to keep their head steady. The HMD will be attached to a laptop computer by means of a cable and they will indicate what they perceive using a finger mouse.

Harris and his team need results from seven astronauts which will take two to three years to collect. The team will then analyze their findings to answer the important questions about the effects of space on perception that are being asked by the VECTION space mission.

Media Contact:

Vanessa Thompson, 91��ɫ Media Relations, 416-736-2100 ext. 22097, vthomps@yorku.ca

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