You enter a round, windowless room, and a large metal door is shut behind you. You stand with your body against the wall, and the room begins to move. Your body weight is up to 547 percent heavier than normal. You attempt to stand straight, but your body leans forward in an effort to maintain your balance. You try to lift your arm in front of you, and it is pulled to the right. The room is spinning at up to 40 revolutions per minute, and you're only in the basement of the Rabb Graduate Center. The slow rotation room, a room that can rotate up to 40 RPM, is located in the Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Laboratory on campus and was designed to study the effects of a rotating environment on motor control and orientation. Research in the lab focuses on a wide ranch of topics, including motion sickness and "all aspects of human orientation and movement control related to space flight," Prof. James Lackner (PSYC), director of the laboratory, says. The work of the lab has made instrumental breakthroughs and contributions toward preparing astronauts for space flight.

"If people go on long space voyages, they can't spend long periods in weightlessness without significant changes taking place in their bodies. The body is very efficient. If you don't need a resource, your body gets rid of it. Since you don't need your skeleton to support your weight in space, [the] body gets rid of [your] bones," Joel Ventura, a research scientist in the lab, says. After 9 months in space, you can no longer return to earth, according to Ventura. A rotating environment, such as the one build in the Graybiel lab, could solve this problem.

In a rotating environment in space, astronauts could experience artificial gravity to manage staying in space longer durations of time. A rotating environment, such as the one built on campus, can serve as a "cure for loss of gravity," according to Ventura. "A rotating environment has artificial gravity. On Earth, you can mimic aspects of what artificial gravity would be like in space, but you can't completely mimic it because you always have the 1-G force [the force of gravity at the Earth's surface ]," Lackner says.

The idea for the lab at Brandeis University developed over 25 years ago through Lackner's collaboration with Dr. Ashton Graybiel, a scientist who studied the effects of manned space flights, including weightlessness, orientation and motion sickness, according to Lackner. "When Sputnik was launched, [Dr. Graybiel] realized man would be going out into space and there was a lot of research that had to be done before that," Ventura says.

Graybiel therefore created a slow rotation room at the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory in Pensacola, Florida, to conduct research on artificial gravity.

Working closely with Graybiel, Lackner decided to build a similar room at Brandeis. In 1983, NASA decided to focus all funding on the room at Brandeis, which was bigger, according to Lackner. Lackner chose to name the Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Laboratory for the man he views as a "pioneer in space."

Using the space provided by the University in the basement of Rabb and the funding that came from NASA, work on a slow rotation room began at Brandeis. The room was designed by Dr. Lackner and Dr. John Evanoff, who was the Research Director at the time.

"Arti Larson helped build it and his father [Art Larson II] did detailed design work," Ventura says. Larsen, who is the electrical and mechanical technician for the lab, began working at the lab in 1983 while he was still in high school and has been involved there ever since. His father had been the head of the machine shop at the University during the time the lab was developed.

"It took close to 10 years to complete the project. We did everything ourselves," Lackner says. In 1982, the Graybiel Lab officially opened, with prestigious speakers including former NASA Astronaut, William E. Thornton.

Following the start of work in the Graybiel lab, use of the slow rotation room in Pensacola decreased dramatically, and the room was demolished recently, according to Lackner. This has left the slow rotating room at Brandeis the only one of its kind in the country. The lab is run by Lackner and Prof. Paul DiZio (PSYC), the lab's associate director since 1986; as well as by staff members and graduate students who conduct research.

The 22-foot diameter slow rotation room in the Graybiel lab has the capacity to move at 0 to 35 RPM, producing effects far beyond any amusement park ride. While rotating at a speed as low as 10 RPM, movements of the body are already drastically altered. A task as simple as throwing a tennis ball across the room is nearly impossible, curving each time to the side of the room as a result of the Coriolis effect, which deflects movements that occur in a rotating environment.

While the effects of the rotating room may be startling for newcomers who reach for an object and find their hand pulled to the side, research in the Graybiel lab has radically transformed previous theories, proving that adaption in a rotating environment can make regular movement possible.

"People will initially make reaching errors and then adapt," Ventura says, explaining that a person's body soon learns to compensate for the forces and will begin to reach more accurately within minutes.

Studies in the Graybiel lab are performed on Brandeis staff and students. Though NASA is currently not providing any funding for the room, research continues. "Someday, I hope NASA will fund an experiment where people will stay in the room for a few weeks," Ventura says.

"The room is designed to be able to run virtually indefinitely without stopping, except for food and for waste disposal as necessary," according to Lackner. Perhaps when NASA is ready to send man into space for long durations, Brandeis will be the first stop en route to space.