NeuroAdapt

The general aim of the project is to investigate how humans adapt to their physical environment and life conditions, i.e. how the environment and the life conditions impact the human brain and the associated cognitive faculties. This issue is poorly understood and has not been investigated yet through the up-to-date technical approaches of cognitive neurosciences, given the intrinsic difficulties to conduct such a study. The project aims at overcoming these difficulties using the advanced neuroimaging tools in current cognitive neurosciences. More specifically, the project is based on the unique opportunity stemming from four human expeditions, which will take place in year 2020: a group of 20 individuals, who otherwise lives in normal urban western conditions, will raid with no external assistance during one month in four, inhabited extreme environments viewed as among the most hostile on earth: a desert hot and dry (average day temperature above 45°C) ; a tropical Amazonian rainforest hot and humid (average day temperature around 35°C) ; a continental polar siberian cold and dry region (average day temperature below -40°C) and a sub-Antarctic/austral cold and humid region (average day temperature close to 0°C, Austral Patagonia). We will investigate the neural and cognitive bases of human adaptations in these individuals facing these various extreme conditions inducing physically and psychologically stressful life conditions. Our objectives are: 1/ to identify using cognitive tests the alteration of cognitive faculties (executive functions: judgment and decision-making; episodic/contextual memory; prosociality: empathy and perspective-taking) induced by these extreme life conditions; 2/ to identify using magnetic resonance imaging brain alterations/plasticity (gray and white matter density, anatomical and functional connectivity) induced by these life conditions and associated with the studied cognitive alterations. 3/ to monitor and identify physiological and chronobiological predictors, as well as mental vs. physical training effects and in-group social status effects on interindividual differences regarding brain plasticity and cognitive alterations. Investigating the impact of extreme environments on the human brain and cognitive functions will help to understand how to prepare, protect and care people facing such life conditions, and more generally, how stressful life conditions shape the brain and the cognitive system and consequently influence the mental and physical health.