It may take months if not years to travel to distant planets.
Science fiction has long suggested that to give humans the chance to survive such a long and intense journey, the best thing would be to go into suspended animation.
THEsuspended animation it is a slowdown of the individual's normal vital functions without causing death, induced by external means. A state of deep sleep, perhaps achieved by rapidly freezing vital organs or taking a cocktail of drugs.
Achieving such a state of suspended animation is still a long way off. But it may have made progress thanks to cutting-edge research from a team of Harvard scientists.
The Harvard team managed to put mice into a state of suspended animation by stimulating some neurons in their brains that control hibernation-like behavior. It is the first time they identify such neuronal circuits, never activated before according to one declaration on research.
In an article published in the esteemed journal Nature today, researchers describe how certain brain pathways in the hypothalamus have been identified as being responsible for putting mice into a state of torpor. Which should be understood as a “state with a significantly reduced metabolic rate and a body temperature of up to 20° C.”
“In warm-blooded animals, body temperature is tightly regulated,” explains the co-lead author Senmiao Sun, graduate student in the Harvard Program in Neuroscience.
“A drop of a couple of degrees in humans, for example, can lead to hypothermia and be fatal. However, torpor bypasses this regulation and allows body temperatures to drop dramatically. “
Animation suspended, the journey continues
There are still many unknowns about the state of the mammalian brain while they are in suspended animation, but we are starting to get some significant data.
In one experiment, researchers found that torpor could be induced by stimulating neurons with the addition of a chemical compound in certain areas of the brain. A specially designed virus-based tool was able to deploy to individual sites of neurons.
It will still take some time before humans can be put into suspended animation to travel to other planets.
“It's too early to say whether we could induce this kind of state in a human, but it's a goal that might be worthwhile.”, said the senior author Michael Greenberg, professor and president of the Harvard Department of Neurobiology.
If you manage to do it, however, the possibilities are endless, especially for space exploration.
“Our advances could lead to an understanding of suspended animation. They would tell us more about metabolic control and even lifespan extension,” Greenberg added.
