Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: David Benoit on 08/07/2009 12:30:04
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David Benoit asked the Naked Scientists:
There are certain skills that need to be practised on a regular basis to keep them up.
If an astronaut were placed in hibernation for a long voyage what would happen to those types of skills? Recently, I watched the movie 2010 with Roy Scheider and it got me thinking. If his character, Dr. Floyd, had tried to brush up on his Russian before being placed in hibernation for about a year, wouldn't he have forgotten most of it?
David
Atlanta
What do you think?
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Yes, I think we will definitely forget some things.
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Yes, I think we will definitely forget some things.
Why?
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People who wake from years in coma have some memory of their past,
although the brain injury which caused the coma may also impair their memory.
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After 3 months hibernation and a couple of months indoors on their table, my tortoises where put out in the garden on warm suuny days. They had no trouble remembering their way aronud the garden and where their outside overnight shelter is. They also seem to have remembered that they like to poo & wee on the patio right outside the kitchen door.
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If the suspended animation process were good enough to risk doing it to humans then the deterioration of the memory would have to be undetectable. If all processes were suspended then so would memory loss.
What were we talking about?
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Yes, I think we will definitely forget some things.
Why?
Well, I don't know how true this really is, but obviously when you're hibernating you can't just get into a bathroom and brush and floss your teeth, sooooo.....
Now researchers at West Virginia University have found a clean mouth may also help preserve memory.
http://ihealthbulletin.com/blog/2009/06/19/floss-prevent-memory-loss/
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the connection between severe dementia and gum disease is well known, Crout said.
http://ihealthbulletin.com/blog/2009/06/19/floss-prevent-memory-loss/
Couldn't this be due to persons with dementia forgetting to brush their teeth, rather than gum disease causing dementia.
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Don't know, could well be.
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Yes, I think we will definitely forget some things.
Why?
Well, I don't know how true this really is, but obviously when you're hibernating you can't just get into a bathroom and brush and floss your teeth, sooooo.....
But a chemist as you should know that chemical reactions' speed decreases when temperature decreases... [:)] and there isn't need to go as low as 0°C in the case of human cells.
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the connection between severe dementia and gum disease is well known, Crout said.
http://ihealthbulletin.com/blog/2009/06/19/floss-prevent-memory-loss/
Couldn't this be due to persons with dementia forgetting to brush their teeth, rather than gum disease causing dementia.
In the population as a whole older people are more likely to have dementia and gum disease.
Even alowing for the fact that the study was all about elderly patients, I'd still like to see how they took age out of the equation. It's not difficult, but did they actually do it?