Brain.Space, a four-year-old Israeli startup that studies data on brain activity, is expected to test a special electroencephalogram (EEG)-enabled helmet on three astronauts next week during a SpaceX flight to the International Space Station (ISS, in the acronym in English). The mission was planned by the private spaceflight company Axiom Space.
The ten-day mission, the first private trip to the space station, will begin on Sunday (3), with four astronauts.
“In fact, we know that the microgravity environment affects the physiological indicators of the body. So it will probably affect the brain and we would like to monitor that,” the chief executive of Brain.Space, Yair Levy, told Reuters.
Data has been collected in space continuously on heart rate, skin resistance, muscle mass and others, but not yet on brain activity, he said.
Brain.Space joins 30 experiments that will be part of the so-called Rakia Mission to the ISS.
Three of the four astronauts — including Israeli Eytan Stibbe — will wear the helmet, which has 460 airbrushes attached to the scalp, and will multitask for 20 minutes a day, the data of which will be uploaded to a laptop on the space station. The tasks include a “visual eccentricity” that the company says has been effective in detecting abnormal brain dynamics.
Similar studies using these tasks have been completed on Earth, and after the mission Brain.Space will compare data from the ISS to see differences in brain activity between Earth and space.
She noted that such experiments are necessary as long-term space exploration and “life outside the world are so close.”
Brain.Space, which also said it raised $8.5 million in a seed funding round, calls itself a brain infrastructure company and is working with the cognitive and brain sciences department at Israel’s Ben Gurion University to transform terabytes. of data into usable information.
Levy said he hopes the space mission will be a springboard for other institutions, researchers and software developers to use his brain data platform.
“Space is an accelerator. The idea is to revolutionize and enable brain activity apps, products and services as easy as extracting data from an Apple Watch,” said Levy, citing the measurement of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as an example. ).
