60 days in bed for science

Imagine tomorrow morning your alarm goes and – you just don’t get up, you stay in bed. Most people will be like: “awesome!!!” Imagine you do that for 60 days, and you’ll even get payed for that! Super awesome!!!!

This scenario is not a nerdy daydream, but real science - if you participate on a so called ‘bedrest study’.

Regarding the current study at the German Aerospace center, we have 12 people, staying in bed for about 60 days, head tilt down in a 6 degree angle to simulate zero gravity and the impact on their muscles.

The most interesting aspect for me is the psychological one: who is the person laying in that bed for 60 days?

The thing is: We can learn a lot from people living in extreme environments, because they teach you about the most important aspects in life. If it comes back to basic, you learn about things, you might forget in your everyday life.

yes or no – the question of autonomy

„Imagine your house is like a public space. Everyone can walk through and you have no power to prevent someone from it. I was afraid, it would be like this.“

What was the first the first thing I realized during our study? The fact, that each participant’s room started to transfer into a small and unique universe. People would hang up posters and pictures, and start to organize themselves in the rooms. I learned how important it is for everyone, to have your own space, to define privacy and decide about connection to a group or solitude. The main factor is, whether you have the possibility to decide about this or not.

“I thought about the astronauts who are stuck in the Soyuz for about two days in a really confined position. Compared to them, I have many possibilities to move.”

being bored!

Once I asked my participants what would motivate them to continue the study.  They said two things: 

First: the support of our team, conversations, consolations and more. I learned that wherever we go, we need people to join and go with us. 

Second: projects and small successes they would achieve every day, like conducting an experiment, learning a new language or designing a webpage. 

„Sometimes I feel bored.

  It‘s Saturday and you can‘t go out.  

  And whatever I do,

  I need much more time for it.

  Going to the bathroom

  becomes a planned action.

  On the other hand, I become

  aware about everything I do.“

perspective and hope

That brings us to our next point: every human being needs a perspective. One of my participants said:

“Being here, I imagined how life must be for someone who is really stuck in bed. Someone old, or sick. I mean, I can leave after two month. Knowing that, helps me a lot.”

We all live, because we have a hope, a dream or a goal we want to reach. What influences us, is our past, but what guides us, is our future. 

„I am looking forward to

  feel the rain on my skin.

  To enjoy the smell of

  fresh boiled coffee.

  To see colours and to listen to

  the sounds of the city.“

this is an outtake of a presentation @SpaceUpNL//october 2015

Kekse, Korrelationen und ein Hashtag namens "Mitgefühl"

Ich bin die mit dem Hashtag für Mitgefühl. Alex Hofmann, angehende Psychologin aus Köln. Mein Alltag beim ÖWF ist eine Korrelation aus Fenstermalfarben, Schokoladenkeksen und sehr langen Zahlenreihen. Vor allem die Zahlenreihen dominieren meinen Tagesablauf. Ich lasse sie miteinander in Balkendiagramme einfließen oder bastele aus Prozentangaben Persönlichkeitsprofile. Manchmal erleben meine Kollegen, wie ich vor meinem Laptop sitze und mich über einzelne Werte in einer monströsen Tabelle laut freue – und verstehen dann nicht so ganz warum eine Zahl wie 8,92 bedeutet, dass Astronauten Mitgefühl in der Kommunikation wertschätzen. Denn eigentlich geht es genau darum – komplexe Emotionen in einfach strukturierten Zahlenwerten auszudrücken – das kann so einige Erklärungsversuche erleichtern. Aber wie genau geht das? Und vor allem – warum?

Psychologie im Weltraum ist ziemlich wichtig: Astronauten leiden in Langzeitmissionen unter Isolation, sensorischer Deprivation oder unter kulturellen Differenzen in ihrer Gruppe. Außerdem ist es wichtig zu schauen, welcher Charaktertyp überhaupt für eine Reise zum Mars taugt und wie man eine Gruppe – egal ob Astronauten oder Mission Control – dafür trainiert. Das herauszufinden, das ist mein Job!

Eine meiner Aufgaben besteht darin ein Teamtraining zu entwickeln, das vor allem Kommunikationsfertigkeiten, aber auch Empathie für die anderen Menschen im Team schult. Gerade in der Kommunikation zwischen Mars und Erde findet man diesbezüglich einige Herausforderungen: Nachrichten von Planet zu Planet werden meistens über Chat übertragen – und bis eine Botschaft ankommt dauert es rund 10 Minuten. Dabei können viele Missverständnisse entstehen, wenn die Kommunikation nicht sachlich genug, aber auch nicht freundlich genug formuliert wird. Mitgefühl ist dabei eine Eigenschaft, die mir besonders wichtig ist. Wenn Menschen lernen mitfühlend in ihrer Arbeitsgruppe zu interagieren, sinkt das die Wahrscheinlichkeit für Konflikte und erhöht die Achtsamkeit in den Teams – das zeigt die Forschung. Gerade für uns beim ÖWF ist es wichtig, dass wir auch in stressigen Missionsphasen gut miteinander umgehen.

Darüber hinaus entwickele ich eine Studie, die genau diese Hypothesen, speziell in unseren Teams, überprüft. Welche Faktoren verbinden Menschen in einer Gruppe, und was trägt dazu bei, dass eine Gruppe nicht miteinander harmoniert? Was können wir aus unseren vergangenen Missionen lernen? Meistens arbeite ich mit Fragebögen, die am Ende zu den langen Zahlreihen führen. Psychologie besteht nämlich zu einem sehr großen Teil aus Statistik! Auf den ersten Blick wirkt das so, als würden wir die Komplexität des Menschen in ein vorpilotiertes Raster einspeisen wollen, aber so ist das nicht! Die Arbeit mit Fragebögen erlaubt uns, von einer großen Anzahl von Menschen, Gedanken und Tendenzen zu erfassen und genau diesen im Training und in der persönlichen Begegnung nachzuspüren.

Was mich an der Arbeit beim ÖWF so fasziniert ist, dass ich (nicht nur in der statistischen Auswertung) ein Team erleben darf, das übermäßig stark zusammenhält und kooperiert. Für mich als Wissenschaftlerin stellt sich die Frage, was genau dazu führt. Für mich als Mensch führt es dazu, dass ich mich in diesem Kollektiv sehr aufgehoben und richtig am Platz fühle. Ich möchte die Erkenntnisse, die mir meine Forschung schenkt aber nicht nur für die Arbeit in Analogmissionen nutzen, sondern möglichst viele Menschen daran teilhaben lassen, für die es eine Bereicherung darstellt lernen zu dürfen mitfühlender und kooperierender miteinander umzugehen. Mitgefühl ist wichtig – egal ob auf dem Mars oder auf der Erde. In unseren Missionschats gibt es deshalb jetzt den #compassion.

dieser Artikel erschien auf: http://oewf.org/2016/09/kekse-korrelationen-und-ein-hashtag-namens-mitgefuehl/

understanding the world through space

„What are you doing?“

„I work in the space industry.“

“And what do you do there?”

“Trying sending people to Mars and stuff.”

“Seriously? You don’t have anything else to do?” 

I can understand why people react in a confused way, when I tell them about my work.  Turning the news on provides a five minutes long image of the problems we have on earth: refugees, wars, racism, sexism…the list is long. One should activate his resources and work on these problems and improve society. And what am I doing? Sending people to Mars. 

Especially as a psychologist, I have the best possibilities to support people in any situation: work with war victims on their trauma or treat people who suffer under depression or stress. Instead I am observing how people react when being confined in an artificial habitat somewhere in the desert.

Shouldn’t I do something else?

No!

(c) europeanspaceagency

Researching space means: analyzing how people behave when living isolated or confined for a longer duration. It means that we look at the cognitive changes of someone who suffers sensory deprivation. We try to understand how groups communicate and cooperate and what happens if we train them in a certain way.

Now look what happens on earth: the same! We find isolation and confinement in every hospital and old peoples care. The number of people living alone is increasing, especially in cities. We work in environments which demand a high level of communicative and social skills, group awareness and coping strategies.

To research these fields is difficult. Working environments are not consistent; many people follow different scenarios of living and working.  Space provides us a perfect paradigm, using people whose psychological condition has been analyzed and positively judged before being exposed to extreme situations. Space discriminates all confounding variables, such as free choice communication to earth, differing possibilities for entertainment, a comparable environment or variations in food. It allows us to produce a perfect laboratory creating the correlation between the healthiest human being and the most complex environmental condition.

How can we interpret our findings from space? Space, being extreme in its way, shows us extreme results and symbolizes a clear picture of what happens if we send people in these conditions. We can assume that there are variations and small aspects of these findings on earth - at any time in everyone’s life. Space allows us to form an obvious map of problems we won’t recognize on earth during our daily life.

Space seems far away and therefore invites us to see things from a different perspective in a compressed way. Once we zoom out of our daily life, we can understand how our world is shaped: with no borders, no limitation.

I often imagine how the world would be if many statesmen and important people would see earth from space. I believe we would have less wars and conflicts and more awareness about our environment. Yet, travelling into space is prohibited to only a few people. Nevertheless we all have the capacity to imagine how it would be and react in an appropriate way. Research is a baseline to support our understanding and transform into a ‘spacewise’ human being.

364qm² of freedom

how living in confined environments can teach you about the most important factor related to freedom

„I’ve learned so much about freedom! “

“Yes I can imagine! You have spent about three month on a really confined place following a precise scientific schedule every day.”

“Yes. And I enjoyed a lot of freedom!”

“You did what???”

It’s the ending day of a three month duration bedrest study. I am taking the last two participants to the train station in my car. Outside my window, it’s dark already. People are wearing thick winter jackets and think about Christmas presents. I remember that the first days of the study, I arrived in shorts and 

I would meet up with friends in the local beer garden after my shift.

A short flashback of my last three month: I’ve visited five different countries, presented scientific ideas to the public, I’ve partied and I saw the seasons changing. I lived a completely normal life, while 12 young people would spend their days in an isolated habitat, in which everything, even the temperature of the space, would be controlled and documented. Every day they would wake up at 6:30am – and there was no moment in which they could decide about their nutrition or just enjoy a walk outside.

And now, this person, sitting next to me in my car, tells me how much he enjoyed the feeling of freedom during the experiment.

How can we explain this phenomenon of a person subjectively feeling free, while objectively living in a confined extreme environment?

During my work, I had the chance to analyze the satisfaction surveys of the past studies we have conducted at this place. We would research isolation, physiological changes and other related questions. One of the last questions in this survey directly asked the participants, what would help them the most to survive this time. The answer would be the same every time: the social support by our team. A familiar atmosphere, jokes, someone listening to you or a hug when you feel sad.  

What I’ve learned out of this is: if everything is missing: fresh air, autonomy, your favorite meal or privacy, there is one factor which can lead you through this time: human support.

Let’s enjoy a small flashback into history to verify this idea: here we meet the famous psychologist Viktor E. Frankl, who survived the under the horrors of Holocaust in the 1940s. He summed up his life in Concentration Camps and detected some factors which would him and his mates to go through this situation. There, he mentioned optimism and humor as a significant factor, but also the future perspective and – human support and love. These things, embedded in his daily life, would help him to forget bad moments and to conquer the hate surrounding him every day.

There are studies which research the effect of social support on those, who have to suffer chronical diseases. Results of these studies show, that there is a correlation between social support and positive progression of a disease. Means: those who enjoy people supporting them during a stressful period of time might conquer the disease much better than others without people close to them.  

We are still in my car, nearly arriving at the train station. I have hard times imagining how someone being stuck on 364qm² might talk about freedom like this.

“There is another factor, which helped me to feel free during the time.”

“Like what?”

“We all met in really pure conditions. Through the work we would know things about each other; we usually do not share to people in society.”

“True. I know how often you would have to go to bathroom and how fast you fell asleep at night.”

“Yes! And not having to hide these things, just being, that creates a feeling of freedom.”

I can see the train station at the end of the road. Pictures of different environments, related to caring situations, appear in my memory. I remember how much we laughed, when I worked in an old people’s care. How I felt a deep connection, when I lived in China to support young autistic children and their families. All these situations created boundaries between people in a natural and intense way. We would experience the smell of our skins, and through that, the bases of our thoughts.

If we sum all this up, we have a short but intense conclusion: in order to feel freedom, we must share love.