Bock O, Arnold K E, Cheung B S
Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science, North York, Canada.
Aviat Space Environ Med. 1996 Feb;67(2):133-8.
Literature proposes three hypotheses for impaired movement execution in hyper-G. The present study attempted to discriminate between these hypotheses by comparing kinematic characteristics and final accuracy of pointing movements in different gravity levels.
Subjects pointed without seeing their hand at targets presented before, during and after exposure to hyper-G.
After factoring out movement amplitude, peak vertical velocity and the skewness of velocity profiles tended to increase, while movement duration tended to decrease with increasing G-level. Further, final response position was slightly less modulated by target position in hyper-G than in normal-G.
Although not all findings reached statistical significance, the observed pattern of results corroborates the hypothesis (2) that the motor system re-interprets hyper-G as increased arm weight.
