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Completed TRL 2 (started at 2, targeting 3)
The ICARUS-Pilot study sought to quantify and assess the potential benefit of using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) cognitive training software to improve cognitive performance in an astronaut-like terrestrial population.
Five volunteer research subjects were recruited from the JSC employee population to mimic characteristics of the NASA astronaut population (age, education/discipline). Subject cognitive performance was assessed before and after executing eighteen sessions of remote cognitive training using six exercises within an adaptive app-based COTS software package (BrainHQ, Posit Science) on study-provided tablets. Pre- and post-training cognitive performance was measured using internal BrainHQ assessments as well as Cognition Test Battery (CTB), an independent software test developed specifically for NASA and used currently in research studies on astronauts. BrainHQ exercises were posited to map well or partially to several CTB sub-tests. Subjects provided feedback on their study experience formally via survey at the conclusion of testing and informally throughout the study if they encountered issues.
Astronauts will experience cognitive decline due to spaceflight stressors on long missions, and exploration crews must be more self-reliant so providing cognitive assessment and countermeasures becomes even more important. A successful training regimen preflight with minimal impact refreshers available inflight could mitigate declines and increase probability of mission success across multiple missions and durations but will be specifically valuable for long-duration Exploration missions.
The brain adapts and changes throughout a person’s lifetime, creating new pathways in response to challenges (such as injury or disease) or training. Software training has shown cognitive performance improvement in healthy military and law-enforcement populations as well as terrestrial disease and aging populations, with performance data showing generalization outside the training program. Little cognitive training data is available specifically related to an astronaut-like population for tasks specifically relevant to crew autonomous operations. This study was the first step to provide that.
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