Abstract
IntroductionThis study aimed to determine the neurocognitive basis underlying the effects of long‐term high‐altitude (HA) exposure on working memory (WM).MethodsUsing event‐related potentials (ERPs), we compared the performance of an HA group (individuals who had lived at HA for 3 years but were born and raised at low altitude [LA]) to that of an LA group (individuals who had only lived at LA) on verbal and spatial n‐back tasks (i.e., 1‐ and 2‐back memory load).ResultsResponse accuracy of the HA group was significantly decreased in comparison to the LA group in both the verbal and spatial 2‐back tasks. The P2 amplitude was larger in the HA than in the LA group in the spatial, but not the verbal 2‐back task. A smaller late‐positive potential (LPP) amplitude was found in the HA group in both the verbal and spatial 2‐back tasks.ConclusionsThese results suggest that HA impairs the matching (P2) process in spatial WM tasks and the maintenance (LPP) process in both verbal and spatial WM tasks, indicating that HA had a different effect on verbal and spatial 2‐back task performance.
Highlights
This study aimed to determine the neurocognitive basis underlying the effects of long‐term high‐altitude (HA) exposure on working memory (WM)
2‐back tasks, but not in the 1‐back tasks; (2) the amplitude of the an‐ terior P2 component was larger in the HA group in the spatial 2‐back task; (3) the amplitude of the frontal late‐positive potential (LPP) component was smaller in the HA group in the verbal and spatial 2‐back tasks, but not in the 1‐back tasks
The larger P2 amplitude in the HA group suggests that the early feature detection process for the spatial attributes of the stimuli were affected by the stress of HA, indicating the HA group may have incurred higher cognitive deficits to process the matching procedure in spatial WM updating
Summary
This study aimed to determine the neurocognitive basis underlying the effects of long‐term high‐altitude (HA) exposure on working memory (WM). Conclusions: These results suggest that HA impairs the matching (P2) process in spa‐ tial WM tasks and the maintenance (LPP) process in both verbal and spatial WM tasks, indicating that HA had a different effect on verbal and spatial 2‐back task performance. In addition to verbal and spa‐ tial WM being impaired in people born and raised at HA, previous behavioral studies (Yan, Zhang, Gong, & Weng 2011a, 2011b) sug‐ gest that short‐term exposure to HA leads to decreased perfor‐ mance in several WM‐related cognitive tasks.
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