Professor Yutaka Hirata and his colleagues at the Department of Robot Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chubu University have confirmed in experiments that human motion learning ability increases when gravity is increased by hypergravity exceeding the gravitational acceleration of 1G on the ground.In the popular anime "Dragon Ball", a "gravity chamber" that receives overgravity such as 20G will appear as a training place to enhance the athletic ability for battle.This time, it was confirmed in an actual experiment that part of the motor learning ability was enhanced.
In the experiment, a hypergravity addition device using centrifugal force was used.In this device, normal gravity and centrifugal force can be combined to add 2G gravitational acceleration in the body axis direction.In the experiment, in such a hypergravity environment, we wore prism goggles whose field of view was shifted to the left by about 17 degrees, and trained to accurately point to the index (red circle on the touch panel).At first, the pointing position shifts to the left side of the index due to the effect of the prism, but as the pointing movement is repeated many times, the correct position can be reached.As a result of the experiment, it took about 4 times for all 1 subjects to show the correct position in 60G, but it was shortened to about 2 times in 20G.
Furthermore, it was confirmed that training in a bright visual environment instead of applying hypergravity would result in faster learning.From the results so far, it is considered that the increase of constant environmental stimuli such as gravity and vision promotes synaptic plasticity (signal transmission efficiency) in the cerebellum that receives these signals.
The results of this time will be a reference for preparing an efficient practice environment for not only athletes but also ordinary people to acquire new athletic abilities.A large device is required to create hypergravity, but the brightness of the practice environment can be easily adjusted.By examining the relationship between gravity and brightness with respect to the learning efficiency of motion in detail, we expect that the environment corresponding to hypergravity can be reproduced with brightness.
The detailed research content was adopted at the international conference "The Life Sciences Meeting 2018" co-sponsored by the International Society of Gravity Physiology and the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, and presented orally. It will also be announced at the 2018th Japan Aeronautical and Environmental Medicine Conference Symposium "Sports and Health Sciences that Support Space Development" to be held at Juntendo University in November 11.
