The Journey to Mars Begins in Antarctica

The Journey to Mars Begins in Antarctica:
A Psychophysiological Study of Stress, Sleep, and Loneliness.

Visiting Scholar Lecture – Open To All

Prof. Dr. Martine Van Puyvelde

Thursday 9th June 2022 – 4pm (Earth Time)
James Parsons Lower Lecture Theatre – LJMU

LJMU’s Faculty of Health are hosting a public lecture by visiting scholar Martine Van Puyvelde ( Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Royal Military Academy – Brussels).

Please RSVP below to reserve your place, and share this event with your friends and colleagues. A PDF flyer can be downloaded here:
MVP-VisitingScholarLecture-LNG-v4

About the talk:

[expand title=”The Journey to Mars Begins in Antarctica: A Psychophysiological Study of Stress, Sleep, and Loneliness.“]
A round-trip voyage to Mars is now estimated to last up to 18 months. It is a future dream that, more than ever, will challenge human resilience to sustain health and wellbeing for extended times and distances in an isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environment deprived of natural forms of sensory stimulation.

One of the common space analogs on earth, where human stress resilience can be studied, is the Antarctic environment. The isolated Antarctic stations have been serving as a source of information to understand the psychophysiological impact of long-term isolation in changed circadian circumstances

However, worldwide, we have recently all experienced a home-based isolation “experiment”. The lockdown restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic turned global society, from one day to another, into a surrogate “IC-Environment”.

In our lab, we conducted a series of studies in several Antarctic stations to better understand the so-called winter-over syndrome – characterized by impaired sleep and mood changes – which we are now comparing with observations during Covid-19.

Based on these comparisons, we have built a regulation hypothesis in which – alongside circadian deteriorations – somatosensory deprivation is a key component of common reported problems during Antarctic missions, space missions and the pandemic.

In this talk, this hypothesis will be illustrated by our research findings, and personal anecdotes.

— Prof. Martine Van Puyvelde

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[Penguin: CC-BY – Christopher Michel  | Perseverance Selfie: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS]