Abstract
Behavioral inhibitory control (BIC) acts as a key cognitive ability, which is essential for humans to withhold inappropriate behaviors. Meanwhile, many studies reported that long-term exposure to high altitude (HA) may affect cognitive ability. However, it is not clear whether long-term exposure to HAs may affect the BIC of an individual. To clarify the role of altitude in the behavioral control of adults and the underlying neural mechanism, we explored the BIC neural activity profiles of healthy immigrants from low-altitude (LA) regions to HA regions. Combining a two-choice oddball paradigm and electrophysiological techniques, this study monitored the N2 and P3 event-related components and neural oscillations across LA and HA groups. Results showed longer reaction times (RTs) for the HA group than the LA group. Relative to the LA group, lower N2 and P3 amplitudes were observed for the HA group. Significant positive correlations were also found between P3 amplitude and theta/delta band power across both groups. Importantly, lower theta/delta band powers were only observed for the HA group under the deviant condition. Collectively, these findings suggest that long-term exposure to HAs may attenuate BIC during the response inhibition stage and provide valuable insights into the neurocognitive implications of environmental altitude on BIC.
Highlights
The importance of understanding the influences of high-altitude (HA) exposure on the cognition of human beings has recently gained more attention (Penaloza and Arias-Stella, 2007; Wang et al, 2015)
reaction times (RTs) were longer in the deviant condition than in the standard condition, and the high altitude (HA) group took longer to respond to targets than the LA group (Table 1 and Figure 2)
The present results revealed weaker prefrontal activity in the HA group, and it appears that the deprived oxygen that supports in high amplitude regions can lead to alterations in neural metabolism rates and a subsequent decline of behavioral inhibitory control (BIC) prefrontal activation
Summary
The importance of understanding the influences of high-altitude (HA) exposure on the cognition of human beings has recently gained more attention (Penaloza and Arias-Stella, 2007; Wang et al, 2015). Immigrants from HAs show decreased activation of the left middle occipital gyrus (Yan et al, 2011a,b) as well as significantly decreased gray matter volumes in inferior and middle frontal gyrus and ACC (Zhang et al, 2013) relative to low-altitude (LA) residents, regions commonly associated with BIC (Liddle et al, 2001; Simmonds et al, 2008) These findings have led researchers to propose that such atypicalities in the prefrontal cortex and ACC may impact the behavior of individuals living in HA areas. The ERP technique has a distinct temporal advantage over other neuroimaging methods (e.g., fMRI), reflecting cortical variations with millisecond resolution
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