T Minus 30

A Mission to "Mars"

In 30 days a Canadian multi-university research team will be entering the HISEAS Mars Habitat in Hawaii to test and validate a new technology for the mobile assessment of brain health and performance to support the NASA Mars mission and/or other missions in outer space.

Team members include Dr. Olav Krigolson from the University of Victoria, Dr. Gordon Binsted from the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Dr. Kent Hecker from the University of Calgary, and PhD Candidates Tom Ferguson and Chad Williams from the University of Victoria.

Developed in partnership with Suva Technologies Inc, a company co-founded by Dr. Krigolson, this new brain health and performance assessment - Aspire - is designed to quickly measure brain function to assess brain performance; specifically perception, attention, memory, learning, and decision-making. The hope in assessing these aspects of brain performance is to detect negative trends such as increased levels of cognitive fatigue or depression while at the same time monitoring and facilitating upward trends to optimize brain performance.

Subsequent blog posts will describe the mission in detail, review the technology and how it works, and introduce team members.