Psychological and Physiological Aspects of Isolation Studies (Based on Russian Research Materials)

The paper presents a brief overview of experiments involving volunteer test subjects on isolation in hermetically sealed chambers and in spacecraft mock-ups with modeling of various factors and situations accompanying space flight, carried out at the Institute of Biomedical Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences. The main results of studies of the impact of a complex of isolation factors in the field of psychophysiology, physiology, biochemistry, immunology, and microbiology are presented. The obtained material indicates the prospects of conducting experiments reproducing unfavorable isolation factors in hermetically sealed chambers of limited volume with a controlled artificial habitat, in the interests of medical support of space flights beyond low near-Earth orbit.