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Matthew Feltham-Chase

Space travel causing Alzheimers


Our society today has a fixation with space travel, and rightly so with
natural resources depleting at an alarming rate. The expansion to other
worlds has been a popular topic lately concerning the possible colonization of
Mars. To prepare for the coming manned missions the University of
Rochester is conducting research on the effects cosmic radiation has on the
central nervous system.
For these experiments they acquired 49 mice, 29 males and 20
females to conduct the tests. The overall procedure was relatively simple in
theory, expose the mice to radiation then test their memory and basic
instinctual responses. Of course the animals were treated humanely
throughout the experiments. The administering of the radiation was done by
loading the mice into foam tubes 8 at a time then exposed to varying levels
of radiation. Control mice were also placed into the testing chamber however
no radiation, just to make sure the exposure to the chamber did not affect
their behavior.
Next was to run the mice through tests to see if there were any effects
on their systems, the first thing that was need was a base line on which to
compare the results. The mice were subjected to two different methods of
behavioral testing, the first was a fear test, how the mice reacted to a
negative stimuli. This was tested by placing the mice into a container to

roam free then a stimuli was added, the expected reaction was for the mice
to freeze in place. I earlier tests most mice froze in response however later
on, after the radiation was taking its toll their responses started to change,
some did not respond to the stimuli, while in others it took longer for them to
react. The second test was about discovery, the mice were placed into a box
one again, and allowed to search for an object, the early tests were used to
compare the results of the later ones. It took the mice longer after radiation
to discover the object, as time went on the results took longer. These tests
yielded very interesting results as there seems to be a correlation between
the radiation and memory.
The last part of this experiment involved the dissection of the mice,
once the effects of the radiation started to take inverse effects on the
animals they were euthanized and preserved for the last step. Researchers
dissected the brains of the mice, looking for certain markers that correlate to
the telltale signs of certain diseases. After six months the results showed an
increased in markers in the brains of both gender mice. However due to the
fact that the female mice were euthanized at an earlier age they cannot be
compared to the males. The fact that the data cannot be compared means
that it cannot be used to prove without a doubt the correlation in the study.
All in all it seems the data speaks for itself, however researches state
we do not know whether cognitive impairment resulted from radiation alone
or represented a synergy between radiation and mutant AD gene expressed
in these mice. More so, does this answer the question of possible flights to

Mars, well unless the problems concerning radiation can be stopped I dont
see them happening in the next few years.

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