ORCID

0009-0000-3976-0152 (Arriaga), 0000-0002-6919-5753 (Britten)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.3390/life15030449

Publication Title

Life

Volume

15

Issue

3

Pages

449 (1-11)

Abstract

The Artemis missions will establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon, serving as a crucial steppingstone for future Mars exploration. Astronauts on these ambitious missions will have to successfully complete complex tasks, which will frequently involve rapid and effective decision making under unfamiliar or high-pressure conditions. Exposure to low doses of space radiation (SR) can impair key executive functions critical to decision making. This study examined the effects of exposure to 10 cGy of Galactic Cosmic Ray simulated radiation (GCRsim) on decision-making performance in male and female rats with a naturally low predisposition for risk-taking (RTP) prior to exposure. Rats were assessed at monthly intervals following SR exposure and the RTP performance contrasted with that observed during the prescreening process. Exposure to 10 cGy of GCRsim impaired decision making in both male and female rats, with sex-dependent outcomes. By 30 days after SR exposure, female rats became more risk-prone, making less profitable decisions, while male rats retained their decision-making strategies but took significantly longer to make selections. However, continued practice in the RTP tasks appeared to reduce/reverse these performance deficits. This study has expanded our understanding of the range of cognitive processes impacted by SR to include decision making.

Rights

© 2025 by the authors.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Data Availability

Article states: "Dataset available on request from the authors."

Original Publication Citation

Smits, E., Reid, F. E., Tamgue, E. N., Alvarado Arriaga, P., Nguyen, C., & Britten, R. A. (2025). Sex-dependent changes in risk-taking predisposition of rats following space radiation exposure. Life, 15(3), 1-11, Article 449. https://doi.org/10.3390/life15030449

Download

Share

COinS