Global Cooperation Enhances Space Flight Research

Before the April 17 launch of Neurolab, the 16-day space shuttle Columbia flight during which 26 studies of the nervous system would be conducted, researchers differed in opinion concerning the microneurography experiment. Either the thin needle placed in a nerve just below the knee of an astronaut would show that electrochemical signals were being transmitted normally from brain to blood vessels via the autonomic nervous system, or the nerve activity would be greater in microgravity than on Ea

Steve Bunk

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PLAYING CATCH: A spring-loaded apparatus measures the anticipatory contraction of James A. Pawelczyk's muscles as he prepares to catch a ball descending in microgravity.

Back at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Center in Houston after the mission, Pawelczyk recalls his concern that decreased nerve activity might make it impossible to move the needle into the precise area necessary to get a measurement. His first test subject was payload specialist Jay Clark Buckey Jr ., an associate professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. "I remember very distinctly the first time I put the needle in Jay's knee, I heard a burst of electrical activity, just like you would if you were on the ground," Pawelczyk says. "As I understand it, the ground crew broke into wild applause."

He adds that preliminary analyses of data indicate that this sympathetic nervous system activity actually increases in microgravity. Assessment ...

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