Moscow: While several agencies are planning to establish new orbital space stations and send expeditions across the solar system, a team of Russian scientists has found that space radiation could temporarily hinder the formation of new cells in brains’ memory centres. The team from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), however, found that effects of low-dose neutron and gamma-ray (Y-ray) radiation had no impact on rodents’ intellectual capabilities, the Sputnik news agency reported.
It means the mice’s mental abilities and behaviour remained almost unaffected by the radiation, with memorisation occurring as normal and the rodents behaving in ways that were no different from the non-irradiated control group.
Irradiated and non-irradiated mice “showed no differences in terms of exploratory behaviour or anxiety, six weeks after the irradiation,” with their “ability to form hippocampus-dependent memory also unaffected,” according to the study published in the NeuroReport academic journal.





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