Humans' 3R-adaptation for Space Colonization

Starting with the unprecedented situation resulting from 2020 springer pandemic that constrained people on Earth to a period of lockdown, we analyzed a panel of studies findings on humans in Space based on a step-by-step positive adaptation emerging from optimal relationships of the individual with the environment, be it in weightlessness, in confinement or in insolation. We observed, described and quantified the subjects' orientations, actions, interactions, expressions and positions with the ethological method, science of behavior, implemented in parabolic flight, in orbital flight, during Sirius-19, Mars-500 and CELSS-180 experiments, and at Concordia polar station. We found that the physical and social environment had impacts on the motor, social and cultural behaviors. The behavioral strategies developed over short-term to extended periods of time are based on new Referentials, Rhythms and Rituals of self-organized crews for autonomous missions to the Moon or Mars. Adaptive tools for humans on Earth are to strike a new balance of usual activities and tasks for mitigating psycho-physiological stress and to create new living and working habits for well-being in extreme conditions

Anisotropic encoding of three-dimensional space by place cells and grid cells

The subjective sense of space may result in part from the combined activity of place cells in the hippocampus and grid cells in posterior cortical regions such as the entorhinal cortex and pre- and parasubiculum. In horizontal planar environments, place cells provide focal positional information, whereas grid cells supply odometric (distance measuring) information. How these cells operate in three dimensions is unknown, even though the real world is three-dimensional. We investigated this issue in rats exploring two different kinds of apparatus: a climbing wall (the 'pegboard') and a helix. Place and grid cell firing fields had normal horizontal characteristics but were elongated vertically, with grid fields forming stripes. It seems that grid cell odometry (and by implication path integration) is impaired or absent in the vertical domain, at least when the rat itself remains horizontal. These findings suggest that the mammalian encoding of three-dimensional space is anisotropic