Center for the Study of Applied Psychology Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province School of Psychology South China Normal University Guangzhou China.
Plateau Brain Science Research Center South China Normal University/Tibet University Guangzhou China.
Brain Behav. 2018 Mar 25;8(5):e00944. doi: 10.1002/brb3.944. eCollection 2018 May.
Previous studies have reported the slowing of reaction times to attentionally demanding tasks due to a reduction in cognitive resource as a result of chronic high-altitude exposure. However, it is still largely unknown whether this reaction slowness can be attributed to the attentional allocation change and/or response patterns.
To clarify this issue, this study investigated attention-related (N2pc and N2 cc) and response-related (MP and RAP) event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify the performance of a visual search task by individuals who had lived in high-altitude areas for three years compared with those living at sea level.
This study showed that the reaction times in response to a visual search task were significantly longer in the high-altitude subjects than in the sea level subjects. Corresponding to this behavioral observation, we found a significantly lower N2pc amplitude and a larger N2 cc amplitude in the high-altitude subjects, suggesting a reduction in spatial attention allocation to the target (N2pc) in these subjects, indicating they need to work harder to preclude cross-talk between response selection and attention direction (N2 cc). Moreover, we also discovered higher MP amplitudes and longer RAP latencies in the high-altitude subjects, which further indicated that these subjects were slower and required greater cortical activation while preparing and executing correctly selected responses (MP and RAP).
Nevertheless, this study collectively provided new insights into the attention reaction slowness from high-altitude exposure.
先前的研究报告称，由于长期暴露于高海拔环境导致认知资源减少，注意力要求高的任务的反应时间会减慢。然而，目前尚不清楚这种反应迟钝是否归因于注意力分配的变化和/或反应模式。
为了澄清这个问题，本研究通过比较在高海拔地区生活三年的人和生活在海平面的人，调查了与注意力相关的（N2pc 和 N2cc）和与反应相关的（MP 和 RAP）事件相关电位（ERP），以确定他们在执行视觉搜索任务时的表现。
本研究表明，与海平面组相比，高海拔组对视觉搜索任务的反应时间明显延长。与这种行为观察相对应，我们发现高海拔组的 N2pc 振幅明显降低，N2cc 振幅明显增大，这表明这些受试者对目标的空间注意力分配减少（N2pc），表明他们需要更加努力地排除反应选择和注意力方向之间的串扰（N2cc）。此外，我们还发现高海拔组的 MP 振幅较高，RAP 潜伏期较长，这进一步表明这些受试者在准备和执行正确选择的反应（MP 和 RAP）时速度较慢，需要更大的皮层激活。
然而，本研究共同提供了新的见解，即高海拔暴露会导致注意力反应迟钝。
