All In The Mind

The success of the recent SpaceX launch to the ISS has reignited talk of return manned missions to the moon and onwards to Mars. But beyond well know physiological effects of space travel on our bodies, what do effects of immobility and microgravity have on our brains? A new study offers a detailed insight from 12 fit astronauts subjected to a battery of tests in a microgravity simulator capturing changes in brain images, disrupted sleep rhythms and mood changes and cognition. As Ivana Rosenzweig, Head of the Sleep and Brain Plasticity Centre at Kings College London explains, her work has important implications for understanding astronaut behaviour and capabilities – and more immediately – the long term effects on the brains of Covid 19 patients supported on ventilators. Viktor E. Frankl, was one of the last of the great Viennese psychotherapists, who used his experiences as a prisoner in German concentration camps in World War II to write ''Man's Search for Meaning,'' an enduring work of survival li