One year after the first lockdown in France, 15 male and female participants aged 27 to 50 on Sunday began an experiment requiring them to live 40 days inside a cave in Ariege (southwestern France), separated from the concept of time, as part of a scientifically-oriented experiment.
The head of the mission, Christian Chloe, explained that the aim is to study the human capacity to adapt to the loss of spatial and temporal parameters, an issue that was raised during the health crisis.
This French-Swiss explorer - who founded the Institute for Human Adaptation - said in September 2020, "It seemed clear that we, as a group, did not know well how to respond to the effects caused by changes in extreme conditions and with a new lifestyle."
On this basis, the "Deep Time" project was born yesterday evening;
Without a watch, phone, or natural light, the group - which includes 7 men and 7 women, in addition to Chloe himself - will have to get used to the 12 degrees temperature and 95% humidity inside Lombreve Cave, generate electricity with a pedal system, and pull what they need. Mechanism of water from a depth of 45 meters.
The team members will be equipped with sensors that will allow dozens of scientists to follow them from a distance.
"This experiment is the first of its kind in the world," said director of the Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Laboratory at the Institute, "ENS".
He added, "All tasks of this kind up to now were aimed at studying the physiological interactions of the body, not to study the effect of this type of time rupture on the cognitive and emotional functions of the human being."
The cave - which is one of the largest in Europe - has been set up "3 separate spaces, one for sleeping, the second for living, and the third for conducting studies on the site's features, especially plants and animals," Chloe told the press.
He said that 4 tons of materials were sent to the site so that the volunteers could live independently.