Dunedin company ADInstruments' PowerLab is fitted in a customised Airbus that flies in parabolic arcs to create weightlessness as part of German research into why human cognitive function improves in zero gravity.
ADInstruments is a worldwide company with its headquarters in Dunedin.
It was one of the first to move into the city's warehouse precinct, helping pave the way for the area's redevelopment.
Scientific content developer Sina Walker said German sport physiology researcher Timo Klein, part of a research team from the Institute of Movement and Neurosciences at the German Sport University in Cologne, was using the product.
Mr Klein had first used ADInstruments equipment as part of his PhD studies at the University of the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland.
His team was interested in how the human brain and body were affected by extreme environments.
Ms Walker said it was already known human cognitive function, or brain performance, improved in space.
''But researchers don't exactly know why yet.''
The European Space Agency had commissioned the team to investigate whether the improvement was due to changes in blood pressure and blood flow during weightlessness.
The information was gathered using an electroencephalography (EEG) cap that measured neural activity.
That information, as well as blood flow information, was sent to the PowerLab.
ADInstruments software was also used on the flight to analyse the data to determine whether changed blood flow was why brains worked better.
The Airbus took off on a three-hour flight from Bordeaux, France, with about 40 researchers, and weightlessness was achieved for 20-second periods about 30 times on each flight.
''It's pretty precious time.''
She said the team had been ''really happy'' with the performance of the equipment and would be using it for more parabolic flights in April and May, when they would be replicating the gravity of Mars and the moon.
ADinstruments hardware manager Clinton Jensen said PowerLab was a data acquisition tool initially developed by company co-founder Michael Macknight 30 years ago, following his master's degree research at the University of Otago.
The product had evolved, particularly in terms of software, to what it was now.
It allowed software to record signals from ''almost anything you want to record a signal from'', including electrical signals in the brain.
The company had sold ''hundreds of thousands'' of PowerLabs across the world since it was first developed.
PowerLab has previously been used on Mt Everest to measure the effects of altitude on human health.
