Human & Aerospace Physiological Sciences, Centre of (CHAPS)

How the human body responds and adapts to the challenges of exposure to novel, hostile or extreme environments is fascinating, complex and mechanistically enlightening. As many of our group work closely in supporting Royal Air Force and/or Space Agency operations, we aim to both understand and overcome the challenges of extreme physiology.

Our Aerospace & Extreme Environment Adaptation group investigates such responses and adaptation in a multi-disciplinary but integrated fashion. Whilst we have expertise and are active in a range of extreme environments our prime areas of research relate to: Acceleration, (Hypobaric) Hypoxia and Microgravity.

The requirement to address operationally extreme environmental challenges rather than simply studying them means that much of our work draws on the knowledge and solutions utilised by numerous disparate disciplines. This perspective helps us to translate our work far beyond the scope of the original physiological issue, or environment. Indeed this is a guiding principle of the group.  For instance, some of our work feeds into that of the Sensory-motor control & pain group via an understanding of the psychomotor responses to hypoxia, whilst our long duration microgravity investigations have resonance with ageing and disuse pathologies, key drivers of the Ageing and Skeletal Muscle Group.

This integrated approach facilitates the research our group conducts to be applied, translated, form the basis of innovation, and inform our research-led teaching and outreach activities (e.g. the terrestrial translation of Space-related biomedical advances).

The Aerospace & Extreme Environment Adaptation group works in partnership with a number of external organizations including:

• Crew Medical Support Office (of the European Space Agency),
• Wyle (Cologne, Germany),
• Centre of Aviation Medicine (RAF Henlow),
• QinetiQ PLC (Farnborough),
• Microgravity Centre at the Pontifícia Universidade do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS; in Brazil).

Our collaborative research with external organizations currently includes

• Evaluation of astronaut aerobic fitness with regard to the efficacy of microgravity countermeasures and their effect upon long duration mission planning.
• How moderate hypoxia (as experienced by helicopter crew) affects psychomotor function.
• How acceleration can affect cerebral blood flow.
• How Cardiopulmonary resuscitation can be performed in partial or microgravity.
• Psychomotor testing in a hypobaric chamber at the Centre of Aviation Medicine
• Man-rated centrifuge at QinetiQ PLC (Farnborough)
• CHAPS students performing CPR on the Body-suspension system at the Microgravity Centre (PUCRS, Brazil).

Group members

• Professor Tony Batchelor
• Dr James Clark
• Dr David A. Green (coordinator and contact)
• Professor Stephen Harridge
• Professor Thais Russomano
• Dr Jane Ward.

Affiliate Members

• Professor Mike Bagshaw
• Dr Simon Evetts
• GpCapt David Gradwell
• WgCdr Nic Green.

The mammalian nervous system is extremely adaptable and responsive to changes in environmental and task demands, development stage, state of health and wellbeing.

By modulating the perceptual, behavioral and systemic physiological responses to such changes, homeostasis may be preserved. However, inappropriate sensori-motor control due to traumatic brain injury or clinical disorders (i.e. vestibular, stroke) as well as neuro-immune interactions involved in the generation and maintenance of pain may affect this process, necessitating the development of new system set points or indeed progressive functional decline may interact and influence these physiological processes.

Our Sensory-motor Control and Pain grouping aims to investigate such responses in a multi-disciplinary but integrated fashion to facilitate basic mechanistic understanding and the development of novel therapies.

Skeletal muscle is integral to human movement and performance. This grouping is focused on conditions in which muscle mass and function is impaired and function is compromised. These include ageing (sarcopenia), neuromuscular diseases - including spinal cord injury stroke and also critical care. Research is focused on both underlying casual mechanisms and strategies to improve muscle performance.

Molecular and cellular approaches through to single fibre mechanics are integrated with whole body functional assessments of movement to address mechanisms of muscle adaptation and consequences for function.