Question: what made you want to the study the heart in space

Julia Attias answered on 5 Dec 2015:

Hi @874nch28, @568nch28, @897nch28, @986nch28,

You have all asked a great question! So, firstly, if you read my answer to the question “what made you interested in the human body and how it worked”, you’ll know that I was always interested in learning as much as I could about the heart to keep it healthy because it is the most precious organ we have. Later in life, through my undergraduate degree, I became very interested in how the body functions in “extreme environments”; environments outside of the norm, like on mountains, whilst scuba diving, in extreme heat and cold. It was a great intellectual challenge for me because I knew that I must need to know how the body is supposed to function in its usual environment before I can start to understand how it functions in environments other than its norm, so having an understanding felt accomplishing. Then I thought about space, and the lack of gravity. It had never occurred to me that this was an environment to study about the body, and that I would learn so much about it! S0 then there we had it: my 2 main curiosities combined: how the heart works, and what happens to the body in space!