Spaceflight has potential detrimental effects on different physiological systems, including sensory and motor processes. The effects can be transient or of long duration. In addition, the brain and muscles tend to adapt to spaceflight, both rapidly and more slowly, over time. Space adaptation tends to optimize performance in space, but it can also generate immediate or long-term health issues, even threats upon re-entry to a gravity environment. Different examples of adaptive and maladaptive sensorimotor responses will be presented from space missions. In addition, the results of parabolic flight experiments and different simulations of hypo-gravity in the laboratory will be presented.
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Francesco Lacquaniti is an Italian neurologist and neuroscientist. He received his medical education and completed his Neurology residency at the University of Turin. After a post-doc in the Department of Physiology of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he joined the Italian National Research Council in Milan where he was Acting Director of IFCN until 1994. In 1994, he became full professor of Physiology at Cagliari University and, since 1997 he held the same position in the Medical Faculty of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Currently, he is Professor emeritus of Physiology at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, the Director of the Laboratory of Neuromotor Physiology at Santa Lucia Foundation IRCCS Rome, and the President of the Italian Physiological Society. His research focuses on the laws of movement control in humans and other animals, their development in children and alteration after neurological lesions. He also studied the neural representation of spatial information in the brain, the neural representation of gravity effects on the body, and how the brain adapts to weightlessness. For his work, he received the Herlitzka International Prize for Physiology, was elected to the Consiglio Universitario Nazionale, was elected to the Academia Europaea, and received a Honorary Degree in Neurosciences from the Université Catholique de Louvain.
Speaker: Francesco Lacquaniti – Professor emeritus, University of Rome Tor Vergata; Doctor honoris causa Université Catholique de Louvain; Director, Laboratory of Neuromotor Physiology, Santa Lucia Foundation IRCCS Rome; Member of Academia Europaea.