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Overview

Vigilance, Stress and Sleep/Wake Measures in NEEMO 14 – A Simulated Space Environment

Principal Investigator:
David F. Dinges, Ph.D.

Organization:
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Astronauts will face a number of challenges when they conduct long missions beyond low-Earth orbit. Some of these challenges, such as isolation, workload and shifting sleep schedules, could impact astronaut behavior and performance. It is important to develop objective measuring tools to determine stress and performance levels.

Dr. David F. Dinges led a project that tested tools in a spaceflight-like environment. In this follow-up to two previous projects during NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) missions, the researchers continued evaluation of the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) Self Test, which is used to measure the fatigue levels of astronauts.

The project was originally scheduled to take place during the NEEMO 14 mission in the Aquarius underwater habitat off the coast of Florida. However, due to NEEMO 14’s postponement, the researchers shifted the project to another space exploration analog, the Haughton-Mars Project on Devon Island in the Arctic Ocean.

The project also called upon crew members from the previous NEEMO missions who used the PVT Self Test to evaluate a new computer-based prototype featuring a user interface that provides Self Test feedback to the user.

The PVT Self Test’s ability to objectively measure sleepiness and fatigue will have benefits for many occupations on Earth, including military, transportation and security personnel.

NASA Taskbook Entry

Technical Summary

NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) has astronauts live in the NOAA Aquarius habitat (19 meters underwater off the coast of Florida). Aquarius is an excellent space analog environment for a number of challenges in the area of behavior and performance such as confinement, limited personal space, isolation, workload timeline demands, extravehicular activity (EVA), environmental risk, and no quick return to surface in an emergency. Aquarius is operated by the National Underwater Research Center of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

The 9-day NEEMO 14 mission was co-sponsored by NASA and NSBRI. The primary operational objectives of NEEMO 14 focused on advanced EVA exploration, monitoring of behavioral health and performance in the crew, operational habitability and human factors, immune function assessment of the crew, effects of low autonomy on the crew, and testing the usefulness of a new advanced scheduling and planning tool. This specific project concerned monitoring the behavioral health and performance of the NEEMO 14 crew during the mission, using the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) Self Test.

The NEEMO 14 mission was originally scheduled for July-August 2008 but was postponed by NASA until February-March 2009. It was subsequently postponed a second time by NASA. These postponements resulted in NASA Behavioral Health and Performance Program requesting we move our NEEMO 14 measures and goals to another space analog environment,the Haughton Mars Project (HMP) that was scheduled to be conducted in the timeframe of this project. In addition, we used astronauts, who participated in our earlier studies (NEEMO 9, 12 and 13) during development of the PVT Self Test to evaluate the prototypical PVT Self Test graphical, user-feedback interface of a new laptop computer-software based version of the three-minute PVT Self Test. Consequently, the findings from this project involve the results from two projects that we completed at NASAs request to meet the goals we had planned to achieve in NEEMO 14.

Key Findings

Project 1 - HMP: PVT Self Test data acquisition on nine participants during the HMP mission was successful. A total of 112 PVT performance tests were acquired and sleep-wake diary and subjective fatigue and stress scales were successfully acquired electronically during the morning and evening PVT Self Test sessions. Actigraph data was successfully collected for 12-31 days per participant (depending on how long the participant was present at HMP). Facial video data for optical computer recognition (OCR) of stress was successfully collected on 3 PVT Self Test sessions, but it was determined from the data that it was not feasible to collect this data via a small portable camera in the HMP environment. There was rarely space or time to set up the camera to record the participant during the PVT Self Test sessions. This has led us to develop the ability to automatically record video of the face from the built-in computer webcam.

Project 2 - Past NEEMO Participants: Six past NEEMO astronauts who completed more than 200 PVT Self Test trials during NEEMO 9, 12 and 13 missions agreed to evaluate the PVT Self Test. Their comments regarding screen layout, keyboard functionality, and wording and layout of questionnaires were integrated into the final development of the PVT Self Test. All of the six evaluating astronauts were enthused about the development of a brief, short-duration performance test that could be used to get immediate objective feedback of their current performance levels on the test.

This is the final report for this project, which accomplished three key goals:

  1. Critical astronaut input was obtained on the features to develop for the PVT Self Test performance feedback, for its use on the International Space Station.
  2. Evidence that the PVT Self Test was sensitive to the effects of psychoactive medications.
  3. Evidence that a computer-based optical data acquisition system was needed to acquire video for the continued testing of OCRs algorithms of stress and negative states in operational environments.

Earth Applications

Development of a three-minute Psychomotor Vigilance Test performance test that is a very sensitive objective measure of fatigue and sleepiness in astronauts during spaceflight will also have extensive utility in a wide range of activities on Earth, including evaluating readiness to perform in military personnel, transportation and security personnel, and people working in high-risk operational environments (e.g., power plants). The test will also have use in identifying excessive sleepiness in patients.

This project's funding ended in 2009