Top

European Journal of Applied Physiology

Published in:

Open Access 01-04-2019 | Original Article

The effects of varying gravito-inertial stressors on grip strength and hemodynamic responses in men and women

Authors: Olivier White, Marie Barbiero, Nandu Goswami

Published in: European Journal of Applied Physiology | Issue 4/2019

Abstract

Purpose

The body behaves as a global system with many interconnected subsystems. While the effects of a gravitational change on body responses have been extensively studied in isolation, we are not aware of any study that has examined these two types of body responses concurrently. Here, we examined how the cognitive and cardiovascular systems respond during application of varying gravito-inertial stressors in men and women.

Methods

Ten men and nine women underwent three 5-min centrifugation sessions (2.4 g at the feet, 1.5 g at the heart) in which participants rhythmically moved a hand-held object for 20 s. Grip force and hemodynamic responses were continuously measured during centrifugation and rest periods.

Result

Men optimized the modulation between grip force and the destabilizing load force, but not women. Exposure to artificial gravity induced higher heart rate and mean arterial pressure in both sexes compared to baseline. However, during artificial gravity exposure, only women decreased heart rate across sessions. Interestingly, we found that finishers of the protocol (mostly men) and Non-finishers (mostly women) exhibited divergent patterns of hemodynamic responses.

Conclusion

We speculate that the lack of grip force adaptation reported in women could be linked to the challenged hemodynamic responses during artificial gravity. By deriving a simple model to predict failure to complete the protocol, we found that mean arterial pressure—and not sex of the participant—was the most relevant factor. As artificial gravity is being proposed as a countermeasure in long-term manned missions, the observed effects in grip force adaptation and hemodynamic responses during varying gravito-inertial stressors application are particularly important.

Augurelle A-S, Penta M, White O, Thonnard J-L (2003) The effects of a change in gravity on the dynamics of prehension. Exp brain Res 148:533–540. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-002-1322-3 CrossRefPubMed

Barbiero M, Rousseau C, Papaxanthis C, White O (2017) Coherent multimodal sensory information allows switching between gravitoinertial contexts. Front Physiol 8:290. https://doi.org/10.3389/FPHYS.2017.00290 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Blaber AP, Goswami N, Bondar RL, Kassam MS (2011) Impairment of cerebral blood flow regulation in astronauts with orthostatic intolerance after flight. Stroke 42:1844–1850. https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.110.610576 CrossRefPubMed

Blaber AP, Zuj KA, Goswami N (2013) Cerebrovascular autoregulation: lessons learned from spaceflight research. Eur J Appl Physiol 113:1909–1917. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-012-2539-x CrossRefPubMed

Bonnet MH, Arand DL (2001) Impact of activity and arousal upon spectral EEG parameters. Physiol Behav 74:291–298. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0031-9384(01)00581-9 CrossRefPubMed

Cebolla AM, Petieau M, Dan B et al (2016) Cerebellar contribution to visuo-attentional alpha rhythm: Insights from weightlessness. Sci Rep. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep37824 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Cheron G, Leroy A, Palmero-Soler E et al (2014) Gravity influences top-down signals in visual processing. PLoS One 9:e82371. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082371 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Evans JM, Ribeiro LC, Moore FB et al (2015) Hypovolemic men and women regulate blood pressure differently following exposure to artificial gravity. Eur J Appl Physiol 115:2631–2640. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-015-3261-2 CrossRefPubMed

Evans JM, Knapp CF, Goswami N (2018) Artificial gravity as a countermeasure to the cardiovascular deconditioning of spaceflight: gender perspectives. Front Physiol. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2018.00716 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Flanagan JR, Wing AM (1995) The stability of precision grip forces during cyclic arm movements with a hand-held load. Exp Brain Res 105:455–464. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00233045 CrossRefPubMed

Flanagan JR, Tresilian J, Wing AM (1993) Coupling of grip force and load force during arm movements with grasped objects. Neurosci Lett 152:53–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3940(93)90481-Y CrossRefPubMed

Gao Y, Goswami N, Grasser E et al (2008) Radix astragali and orthostatic response: a double-masked crossover study. Aviat Space Environ Med 79:94–98. https://doi.org/10.3357/ASEM.2193.2008 CrossRefPubMed

Goswami N, Lackner HK, Papousek I et al (2010) Rate of cardiovascular recovery to combined or separate orthostatic and mental challenges. Int J Psychophysiol 75:54–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2009.11.005 CrossRef

Goswami N, Lackner HK, Papousek I et al (2011) Does mental arithmetic before head up tilt have an effect on the orthostatic cardiovascular and hormonal responses? In: Acta Astronautica. pp 1589–1594

Goswami N, Roessler A, Hinghofer-Szalkay H et al (2012) Delaying orthostatic syncope with mental challenge: a pilot study. Physiol Behav 106:569–573. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2012.02.022 CrossRefPubMed

Goswami N, Batzel JJ, Clément G et al (2013) Maximizing information from space data resources: a case for expanding integration across research disciplines. Eur J Appl Physiol 113:1645–1654. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-012-2507-5 CrossRefPubMed

Goswami N, Bruner M, Xu D et al (2015a) Short-arm human centrifugation with 0.4 g at eye and 0.75 g at heart level provides similar cerebrovascular and cardiovascular responses to standing. Eur J Appl Physiol 115:1569–1575. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-015-3142-8 CrossRefPubMed

Goswami N, Evans J, Schneider S et al (2015b) Effects of individualized centrifugation training on orthostatic tolerance in men and women. PLoS One 10:e0125780. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125780 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Grasser EK, Goswami N, Hinghofer-Szalkay H (2009) Presyncopal cardiac contractility and autonomic activity in young healthy males. Physiol Res 58:817PubMed

Harm DL, Jennings RT, Meck JV et al (2001) Invited review: gender issues related to spaceflight: a NASA perspective. J Appl Physiol 91:2374–2383CrossRefPubMed

Hinghofer-Szalkay H, Lackner HK, Rössler A et al (2011) Hormonal and plasma volume changes after presyncope: changes after presyncope. Eur J Clin Invest 41:1180–1185. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2362.2011.02523.x CrossRefPubMed

Indovina I, Maffei V, Bosco G et al (2005) Representation of visual gravitational motion in the human vestibular cortex. Science 308:416–419. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1107961 CrossRefPubMed

Julius S (1991) Autonomic nervous system dysregulation in human hypertension. Am J Cardiol 67:B3–B7CrossRef

Patel K, Rössler A, Lackner HK et al (2016) Effect of postural changes on cardiovascular parameters across gender. Medicine (Baltimore) 95:e4149. https://doi.org/10.1097/MD.0000000000004149 CrossRef

Rodriguez-Paras C, Khanade K, Sasangohar F (2018) Stress Detection techniques in different work domains. Proc Hum Factors Ergon Soc Annu Meet 62:1704–1706. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541931218621386 CrossRef

Rousseau C, Fautrelle L, Papaxanthis C et al (2016) Direction-dependent activation of the insular cortex during vertical and horizontal hand movements. Neuroscience 325:10–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2016.03.039 CrossRefPubMed

Schneider S, Robinson R, Smith C et al (2014) Gender specific changes in cortical activation patterns during exposure to artificial gravity. Acta Astronaut 5:66

Smith C, Goswami N, Robinson R et al (2013) The relationship between brain cortical activity and brain oxygenation in the prefrontal cortex during hypergravity exposure. J Appl Physiol 114:905–910. https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.01426.2012 CrossRefPubMed

Van Ombergen A, Demertzi A, Tomilovskaya E et al (2017) The effect of spaceflight and microgravity on the human brain. J Neurol 264:18–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-017-8427-x CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Verma AK, Xu D, Bruner M et al (2018) Comparison of autonomic control of blood pressure during standing and artificial gravity induced via short-arm human centrifuge. Front Physiol. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2018.00712 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Wagner M, Sahar Y, Elbaum T et al (2015) Grip force as a measure of stress in aviation. Int J Aviat Psychol doi. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508414.2015.1162632 CrossRef

White O (2015a) The brain adjusts grip forces differently according to gravity and inertia: a parabolic flight experiment. Front Integr Neurosci. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2015.00007 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

White O (2015b) The brain adjusts grip forces differently according to gravity and inertia: a parabolic flight experiment. Front Integr Neurosci 9:1–10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2015.00007 CrossRef

White O, McIntyre J, Augurelle A-S, Thonnard J-L (2005) Do novel gravitational environments alter the grip-force/load-force coupling at the fingertips? Exp Brain Res 163:324–334. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-004-2175-8 CrossRefPubMed

White O, Bleyenheuft Y, Ronsse R et al (2008) Altered gravity highlights central pattern generator mechanisms. J Neurophysiol 100:2819–2824. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.90436.2008 CrossRefPubMed

White O, Lefèvre P, Wing AM et al (2012) Active collisions in altered gravity reveal eye-hand coordination strategies. PLoS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044291 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

White O, Clément G, Fortrat J-O et al (2016) Towards human exploration of space: the THESEUS review series on neurophysiology research priorities. npj Microgravity 2:16023. https://doi.org/10.1038/npjmgrav.2016.23 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

White O, Thonnard J-L, Lefèvre P, Hermsdörfer J (2018) Grip force adjustments reflect prediction of dynamic consequences in varying gravitoinertial fields. Front Physiol. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2018.00131 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Title: The effects of varying gravito-inertial stressors on grip strength and hemodynamic responses in men and women
Authors: Olivier White
Marie Barbiero
Nandu Goswami
Publication date: 01-04-2019
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in: European Journal of Applied Physiology / Issue 4/2019
Print ISSN: 1439-6319
Electronic ISSN: 1439-6327
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-019-04084-y

At a glance: The ONWARDS insulin icodec trials

Springer Medicine

The effects of varying gravito-inertial stressors on grip strength and hemodynamic responses in men and women

Abstract

Purpose

Methods

Result

Conclusion

At a glance: The ONWARDS insulin icodec trials

Springer Medicine

Abstract

Purpose

Methods

Result

Conclusion

Please log in to get access to this content

Other articles of this Issue 4/2019

Moderate treadmill run worsened static but not dynamic postural stability of healthy individuals

Does 6 weeks of HIIT alter structural and functional cardiac and arterial stiffness in young adults?

The application of repeated testing and monoexponential regressions to classify individual cardiorespiratory fitness responses to exercise training

Effects of exercise intensity on vascular and autonomic components of the baroreflex following glucose ingestion in adolescents

Cardiac performance after an endurance open water swimming race

Associations between sensorimotor gating mechanisms and athletic performance in a variety of physical conditioning tests