AUTHOR=Bao Xiaohua , Zhang Delong , Li Xiaoyan , Liu Ming , Ma Hailin 

TITLE=Long-term high-altitude exposure influences task-related representations in visual working memory

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neurology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2023.1149623

DOI=10.3389/fneur.2023.1149623

ISSN=1664-2295

ABSTRACT=Human working memory is impaired when individuals are exposed to high altitudes, however, whether the capacity of visual working memory is affected remains unclear. This study combined a lateralized change detection task and event-related potentials analysis to explore changes in visual working memory capacity among individuals who emigrated from a low-altitude environment to Tibet (a high-altitude environment). We measured participants' contralateral delay activity (CDA) under different memory loads. ERP component analysis showed that both the high-altitude and low-altitude groups reached an asymptote at memory load four. However, the high-altitude group performed larger ipsilateral activity than contralateral activity under each memory load, compared with the low-altitude group. These findings demonstrated that the attentional resource of long-term HA exposure is more captured by task-irrelevant information, potentially due to impaired inhibitory control, which makes it difficult for them to exclude the interference of task-irrelevant information.