She wore a wireless EEG device, an Oura Ring and a glucose monitor throughout the stay, recording brain activity, sleep stages, heart-rate variability, circadian rhythms and metabolic responses. Her resting heart rate dropped and swung more widely than normal. Food tasted sharper than usual, a shift she linked to changes in proteins tied to taste and smell. Glucose levels held steady even as proteins involved in glucose uptake increased.

Sleep came apart from its usual structure. REM-like brain states appeared at scattered points during the day rather than confined to sleep. Skin and saliva microbiomes shifted over the five days, while her gut microbiome stayed stable throughout. Several of these changes, including the sleep disruption, reverted to baseline within a few days of leaving the cave.

The psychological arc moved in the opposite direction from the physical one. Aran found the early days pleasant. By day three her circadian rhythm had slipped and her sense of time blurred, and she described struggling against the disorientation. She experienced a vivid vision of her mother, a cousin and her late grandmother, who had died.

Afterward, Aran reported a heightened sense of compassion and scored higher on an NIH-designed questionnaire than she had before entering the cave. She described the study as an "n of one" and said the findings should not be treated as conclusive, calling for further research into how extended darkness affects the body and mind.