Utrecht University, Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Princetonplein 5, 3584CC Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Neurosci Lett. 2012 Oct 31;529(1):7-11. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2012.09.026. Epub 2012 Sep 19.
Although the mechanisms of neural adaptation to weightlessness and re-adaptation to Earth-gravity have received a lot of attention since the first human space flight, there is as yet little knowledge about how spatial orientation is affected by partial gravity, such as lunar gravity of 0.16 g or Martian gravity of 0.38 g. Up to now twelve astronauts have spent a cumulated time of approximately 80 h on the lunar surface, but no psychophysical experiments were conducted to investigate their perception of verticality. We investigated how the subjective vertical (SV) was affected by reduced gravity levels during the first European Parabolic Flight Campaign of Partial Gravity. In normal and hypergravity, subjects accurately aligned their SV with the gravitational vertical. However, when gravity was below a certain threshold, subjects aligned their SV with their body longitudinal axis. The value of the threshold varied considerably between subjects, ranging from 0.03 to 0.57 g. Despite the small number of subjects, there was a significant positive correlation of the threshold with subject age, which calls for further investigation.
尽管自首次人类太空飞行以来，人们对神经适应失重和重新适应地球重力的机制给予了很多关注，但对于空间定向如何受到部分重力（如月球重力 0.16g 或火星重力 0.38g）的影响，人们知之甚少。到目前为止，已有 12 名宇航员在月球表面累计停留了大约 80 小时，但没有进行任何心理物理学实验来调查他们对垂直性的感知。我们在部分重力的第一次欧洲抛物线飞行任务中研究了在较低重力水平下，主观垂直（SV）是如何受到影响的。在正常和超重状态下，被试者准确地将 SV 与重力垂直对齐。然而，当重力低于某个阈值时，被试者将 SV 与身体纵轴对齐。阈值在被试者之间差异很大，范围从 0.03 到 0.57g。尽管被试者数量较少，但阈值与被试者年龄呈显著正相关，这需要进一步研究。
