The Neuroscience of Being Human
The Neuroscience of Space Travel
The overview effect and profound awe, the confused inner ear of microgravity, fluid shifts and the astronaut's changing eyes, sleep in orbit and the plasticity of a brain far from Earth: what spaceflight reveals about being human
2,505-word article with 24 Harvard references.
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Spaceflight takes the human brain into an environment it never evolved to meet, and what happens there is teaching neuroscience some of its most profound lessons about how adaptable we really are. This fully referenced article examines the astronaut brain from launch to return: the overview effect, in which seeing Earth whole triggers a life-changing surge of awe, the vestibular chaos of microgravity as the inner ear loses its sense of down, the upward fluid shift that reshapes the eye and produces spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome, the disrupted sleep of a place with sixteen sunrises a day, the psychological strain of isolation and confinement far from home, and above all the remarkable neuroplasticity that lets the brain rebuild its model of the body and the world. What astronaut brains reveal, in the end, is how deeply Earth is written into us.
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