Effects of caffeine and blue-enriched light on spare visual attention during simulated space teleoperation
Name
s41526-023-00299-8.pdf
Size
1.16 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
bde3ed35ce3bb068651cc59240445945
Author(s)
Liu, Andrew M.
Galvan-Garza, Raquel C.
Flynn-Evans, Erin E.
Rueger, Melanie
Natapoff, Alan
Lockley, Steven W.
Oman, Charles M.
Date Issued
December 19, 2023
Journal
npj Microgravity
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Liu, A.M., Galvan-Garza, R.C., Flynn-Evans, E.E. et al. Effects of caffeine and blue-enriched light on spare visual attention during simulated space teleoperation. npj Microgravity 9, 94 (2023).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Safe and successful operation of the International Space Station robotic arm is a complex task requiring difficult bimanual hand coordination and spatial reasoning skills, adherence to operating procedures and rules, and systems knowledge. These task attributes are all potentially affected by chronic sleep loss and circadian misalignment. In a randomized, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial examining the impact of regularly timed low-dose caffeine (0.3 mg kg−1 h−1) and moderate illuminance blue-enriched white light (~90 lux, ~88 melEDI lux, 6300 K), 16 participants performed 3 types of realistic robotic arm tasks using a high-fidelity desktop simulator overnight. Our goal was to determine how these countermeasures, separately and combined, impacted telerobotic task performance and the ability to allocate attention to an unrelated secondary visual task. We found that all participants maintained a similar level of robotic task performance throughout the primary task but the application of caffeine separately and with blue-enriched light significantly decreased response time to a secondary visual task by −9% to −13%, whereas blue-enriched light alone changed average response times between −4% and +2%. We conclude that, for sleep-restricted individuals, caffeine improved their ability to divide their visual attention, while the effect of blue-enriched light alone was limited. Light and caffeine together was most effective. Use of these countermeasures should improve the margin of safety if astronauts perform familiar tasks under degraded conditions or novel tasks where task workload is increased.
Subjects
Space and Planetary Science
Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)
Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (miscellaneous)
Materials Science (miscellaneous)
Medicine (miscellaneous)
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Human Systems Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41526-023-00299-8
