Riva, D., Rossitto, F, and Battocchio, L. “Postural muscle atrophy prevention and recovery and bone remodeling through high-frequency proprioception for astronauts. Acta Astronaut 65: 813–819, 2009.
Current countermeasures for negative effects of weightlessness consist of physical exercises and loading suits, designed to load the musculoskeletal structures through the activation of proprioceptive and weight-bearing systems, in order to preserve postural and motor functions [1].
The difficulty in applying active countermeasures (physical exercises) at appropriate intensity and volume has prompted the search for new passive countermeasures, easier to put into practice. Investigations on humans during space flights of varying duration, research in dry immersion [2], ground-based simulation studies [3] and experiments on animals (hindlimb unloading model) [4] have shown that support afferences from the sole of the foot play an important role in the maintenance of the activity of the tonic motor units of the leg muscles (soleus, gastrocnemius).
