Space Oddity: microgravity as a neurocognitive catalyst for transformative consciousness experiences

Earth's gravity acts as a deeply ingrained '1G super-prior' in the brain's predictive architecture, stabilizing how the brain integrates sensory information and organizes large-scale networks. When people enter microgravity, disrupted vestibular signals destabilize this super-prior, causing widespread prediction errors that force recalibration across brain systems. This process extends beyond sensorimotor adaptation to reshape conscious experience—altering self-location, emotional regulation, and perceptual coherence, and potentially triggering transformative phenomena. Drawing computational parallels with psychedelic states, the authors propose that microgravity transiently relaxes high-level priors and enhances global integration, offering a non-pharmacological way to probe the foundations of human awareness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Human consciousness has evolved under the constant pull of terrestrial gravity, yet its role in shaping perception and awareness has received limited theoretical attention. As spaceflight transitions from short missions to long-duration habitation, understanding how consciousness responds to non-terrestrial gravity becomes increasingly urgent. In this perspective, we synthesise behavioural, neurophysiological and neuroimaging evidence to argue that Earth’s gravity functions as a deeply entrenched 1G super-prior within the brain’s predictive architecture. This super-prior stabilises multisensory integration and constrains large-scale brain network organisation. Exposure to microgravity disrupts vestibular reliability, destabilising this super-prior and triggering cascades of prediction errors that necessitate widespread recalibration across cortical and subcortical systems. We show that these processes extend beyond sensorimotor adaptation, reshaping conscious experience through altered self-location, emotional regulation and perceptual coherence, and potentially underpinning transformative phenomena. Drawing computational parallels with psychedelic states, we propose that microgravity constitutes a non-pharmacological perturbation that transiently relaxes high-level priors, loosens hierarchical constraints and enhances global integration. By situating consciousness in an environment for which evolution offers no precedent, spaceflight provides a unique experiment for probing the contingent foundations of human awareness and the mechanisms through which consciousness can be transformed.