Brain activity reveals the awe-inspiring experience astronauts report.
Key points
- Astronauts have reported the Overview Effect, the awe-inspiring experience of viewing planet Earth from space.
- A virtual reality simulation has mimicked this space journey, sending VR users in an orbit around the planet.
- Brain imaging results show the brain signals that respond to this event.
Three months ago Bill Anders passed at the age of 91 years. In December 1968 it was Anders together with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell who were the first to leave the Earth’s orbit and travel to the Moon, circling the Moon 10 times. On December 24, 1968, the day before Christmas, Anders called out to his fellow astronauts: “Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!” The photograph he took became known as “Earthrise”. The Earthrise photo was one of the first visual representations that allowed us Earthlings to see what astronauts had been seeing – the profound beauty and fragility of our planet seen from a distance. An experience that inspired many to contemplate the broader meaning of our place in the universe.
In 1987 it was author Frank White who gave a name to the humbling experience. He called it the “Overview Effect”. Interviews with dozens of astronauts reported the experience as “beyond words”, one that highlights Earth as a unified whole rather than a place of separate nations and divisions, a deep sense of responsibility to protect Earth’s environment, and a greater appreciation for global cooperation and environmental sustainability.
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut André Kuipers experienced the Overview Effect twice, first on a mission to the International Space Station from the 19th to the 30th of April 2004, then again from December 21, 2011 until July 1, 2012. Kuipers realized that only 610 people reached the Earth’s orbit and 24 people (among them Bill Anders) traveled beyond low Earth orbit and either circled, orbited, or walked on the moon. Only those happy few experienced the Overview Effect. Kuipers wondered how others – us homo sapiens who will unlikely become astronauts in the near future – experience the Overview Effect. And he came up with a creative solution, a virtual reality simulation. His SpaceBuzz program (half named after Buzz Aldrin, one of 12 people who set foot on the moon), created a virtual reality journey to experience the Overview Effect. To create Ambassadors of Planet Earth.
Kuipers created an actual rocket ship mounted to a truck that drives around to primary schools across Europe (but we also visited the United States). Seated in hydraulic chairs wearing virtual reality headsets, the VR space travelers are launched into space and enter an orbit around Earth to experience planet Earth from space. While experiencing orbiting our planet, Kuipers explains the wonders of the world, the absence of borders, the beauty of natural phenomena, and shows the consequences of climate change when the user circles around the blue marble.
But is the Overview Effect real? As a scientist, my job is to be skeptical until empirical evidence proves otherwise. The advantage of VR simulations is that we can obtain such empirical evidence, evidence much harder to obtain during actual space journeys. We can actually conduct relatively affordable experiments with no space hazard to our participants, or zero-gravity issues that can make conducting an experiment delicate. In one recently published study, we asked 42 college students to take the SpaceBuzz journey. Before they were launched in the rocket ship – the virtual one – we asked them to fill out questionnaires to find out whether they had experienced what astronauts had experienced.
But importantly, during the space journey, we asked them to wear a helmet. Not the one that provides oxygen, but the one that monitors brain activity, an EEG scanner that records electroencephalograms, the electrical activity in the brain.
When we analyzed the results questionnaires the evidence showed that the participants of the study had experienced the Overview Effect in the VR simulation. That was exciting news, as it showed that the VR simulation demonstrated what was made to do. But the more exciting results arrived later.
Two years ago I had the honor to present at the International Astronautical Congress about the future of education with the SpaceBuzz program. After the presentation, an email came in from my Ph.D. candidate. Anna-Broers van Limpt had analyzed the EEG data and found something peculiar. She had segmented the VR simulation into 34 meaningful segments such as the launch, orbit, Overview Effect, and northern lights, and mapped these 34 segments onto the EEG recordings. She had cleaned the recorded signal and divided it into frequency bands, the rhythm of the brain. Other studies had shown that beta frequency (13–30 Hz) linked to focus, concentration, arousal in emotions, active thinking, and awareness. Gamma frequency (30–100 Hz) had been linked to sensing, feature binding, attention, memory, bursts of insight, and high-level cognitive processing. And for all the brain regions frontal, central, parietal, both left and right of the brain, a spike occurred. When I viewed the graphs I could hardly suppress my excitement. André Kuipers happened to stand behind me and took a picture of the graph, but the scientist in me immediately exclaimed that we really had to double (no triple! no quadruple!) check the results. We did.
Source: van Limpt-Broers, H. A. T., Postma, M., van Weelden, E., Pratesi, S., & Louwerse, M. M. (2024)
Both the beta and gamma frequencies showed a major spike over the duration of the VR simulation. At one particular event. We identified that event and carefully compared the EEG findings to several other events. We could only reach one conclusion. EEG recordings revealed changes in beta and gamma frequency bands during the defining moment of the Overview Effect. The findings from questionnaires further confirmed the findings obtained from brain activity.
The SpaceBuzz program has now launched over 40,000 children worldwide into space. That journey in itself is awe-inspiring. But with increased confidence, scientifically backed-up confidence, we can now conclude that these children may actually become ambassadors of planet Earth. The evidence shows that they too must have experienced the Overview Effect.
References
van Limpt-Broers, H. A. T., Postma, M., van Weelden, E., Pratesi, S., & Louwerse, M. M. (2024). Neurophysiological evidence for the overview effect: a virtual reality journey into space. Virtual Reality, 28(3), 1-19.
White, F. (1998). The overview effect: Space exploration and human evolution. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.