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Astronauts' brains retain memory of gravity even after months in space, study finds

Researchers working with 11 astronauts discovered that even in weightlessness, the brain continues to behave as if gravity is still present - a finding that could impact future space exploration.

READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2026/04/21/memory-of-gravity-after-months-in-space

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Transcript
00:19When you are on board the ISS in weightlessness, the movement becomes
00:23symmetric because there is no more gravitation effect of gravity. So which
00:27means that you have to squeeze as much when you are at the top than when you are on the
00:32bottom, which is not the case on Earth. Because on Earth, the risk of slippage is only at the
00:36bottom. At the top, there is no risk of slippage. And so we could observe, we were expecting
00:41the astronaut after a few repetitions, at least after a few months, to squeeze the object
00:46in a fully symmetric way. And we saw that it was not the case. So what we observed was
00:52that the astronaut was gripping the object more when they are at the top than at the
00:58bottom. So this is why we uncover the kind of illusions. The brain somehow overcompensate
01:04the expectation. And so this is why they squeeze more at the top than at the bottom.
01:20It was very interesting because what we showed is that the first few movements, they were
01:26really still having memory of weightlessness environment. So there was a potential hazard
01:32because they did not grip the object optimally. But what was very interesting is that after
01:38a few tenths of repetitions, they recovered the normal behavior. What this shows is that
01:43when they returned back to Earth, they relearned the Earth's environment much faster than they
01:48learned the microgravity environment.
02:06If we prepare astronauts to go to land on the moon, for instance, in that case, they might
02:13need some specific training because the way they are going to manipulate objects might
02:17be affected by partial gravity. So they might need some specific training because the way
02:20they might need some training on Earth just to make them adapt to a partial gravity environment.
02:26But that's another question, of course, that's for the future plants.
02:30Thanks for listening.
02:42Transcription by CastingWords
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