Helping astronauts overcome space sickness 🩺 When in space, astronauts experience psycho-physiological and biological problems that we call space sickness. Dr. Patricia Cowings, a research psychologist in the Biomedical Division of NASA's Ames Research Center, conducted research on space sickness to help astronauts overcome it. Cowings' tests induced sickness so she could learn how to combat the effects. Because astronaut training time is precious, she had to come up with a program that would take astronauts no longer than six hours to learn to control the sickness. Cowings designed a program of 12 half-hour sessions combining training with biofeedback. During training, she taught a subject to mentally evoke a sensation, like relaxation of muscles, to bring about desired physiological changes such as increased skin temperature or relaxed muscles. Cowings' approach to biofeedback involved having to control as many as 26 physiological functions related to motion sickness. These included...