The Program
Over her thirty-year career at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Dr.
Cowings has studied the effects of gravity on human physiology
and performance while in space. The Autogenic Feedback Training
Exercise, or AFTE which she developed, allows astronauts the ability to
psychologically control their reactions and gives them ways to adapt
faster to the different environments between Earth and space.
Patricia Szanne Cowings was born in New York City on December 15,
1948. Both her parents pushed education as very important. As a
child growing up, she became interested in psychology as the study of
what humans have the ability to do. In college she studied psychology
and began working with a professor teaching people how to control
brainwave activity. From here she went to graduate school.
As a graduate student in psychology, at the University of California, Davis, Cowings
became involved with space sciences quite by accident. She enrolled in a course offered by the engineering department on space shuttle design. During a class trip to
the Ames Research Center, she learned about the biomedical problems of manned
spaceflight and thus her interest was piqued. Still a graduate student, she began
work at the Ames Center in 1971 and has continued working there ever since.
“Doesn’t matter where you are from or what you look like. Doesn’t matter if you’re poor.
A human being can learn and can achieve whatever they set out to do (or come near to it).
I’ve spent my life studying human potential - and stretching my own.”
Cowings was born and raised in The Bronx, New York City on December 15, 1948. She is the only daughter of Sadie B. and Albert S. Cowings. Sadie was an assistant preschool teacher. Albert was a grocery store owner. She had three other brothers who went on to become a two-star army general, a jazz musician, and a freelance journalist. Her parents emphasized education as a "way of getting out of the Bronx
Patricia found her love for science at a young age. Patricia was involved in African dance and step and graduated with a bachelor's degree in the arts from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1970.Psychology and later psychophysiology showed her how to enhance human potential. 'What better field is there than to study the animal who created all the other fields? Humans!' This love was further helped by her psychologist aunt, whom she considered a deep inspiration because she had earned a PhD from the University of California at Davis in 1973. Taking an engineering class in grad school where she took part in designing a space shuttle helped launch her desire to work in the field of space technology.
She did most of her research at NASA Ames Research Center. There she developed and patented a physiological training system called Autogenic-Feedback Training Exercise (AFTE), which enables people to learn voluntary self-control of up to 24 bodily responses in six hours. Her work was first tested in 1985 for (STS 51-b & STS 51c) Spacelab-3 and the first DOD shuttle mission. She tested her AFTE training method also on the Space J-Lab Mission (the first Japanese shuttle mission), with her work focusing on ridding of the astronaut's motion sickness.
Later she trained four cosmonauts to control both motion sickness and low blood pressure after six months in space aboard the MIR space station. She found success with her biofeedback methods and continued to teach people how to control motion sickness, improve the performance of search & rescue pilots, and reduce symptoms of several patient populations suffering from nausea, dizziness and fainting. She has helped author several publications with her husband, Dr. William B. Toscano. They have a son, Christopher Michael Cowings Toscano, who traveled with them as they trained space crews.
Today, she continues her work helping to prevent motion sickness for astronauts in space, as well as helping control motion sickness for their return home.[8] She is the principal investigator of Psychophysiological Research Laboratories at NASA Ames Research Center and has held adjunct professorships in Psychiatry at UCLA and both medical and clinical psychology at the uniformed services university. (ARC)
