Acute Exercise Impairs Cognitive Function at High Altitude
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ascent to high altitude can impair aspects of cognitive function in an altitude‐dependent manner. Interestingly, a single bout of aerobic exercise transiently improves cognitive function in normobaric hypoxia, suggesting that aerobic exercise may be an effective strategy for improving brain function at altitude, but this phenomenon has yet to be explored. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a single bout of aerobic exercise on cognitive function at low and high altitude in the Nepal Himalaya. Fifteen healthy volunteers (24.1±3.5yrs; 9 females) performed 20 minutes of aerobic exercise at 40–60% of their heart rate (HR) reserve at low (1400m) and high altitude (4370m) after 7 days of incremental ascent. Ascent‐related physiological data were collected in the morning before exercise including arterial blood pressure, HR, peripheral capillary oxygen saturation, hemoglobin concentration, hematocrit, end‐tidal CO 2 (P ET CO 2 ), and acute mountain sickness (AMS) scores. During exercise, participants wore HR monitors in order to maintain HR within the prescribed intensity zone. Cognitive function was assessed before and 10‐min after exercise using a battery of standardized iPad‐based tests (BrainBaseline, Digital Artefacts). A 2‐factor (Time × Condition) repeated measures analysis of variance was performed to examine differences in cognitive function before and after exercise (Time) at low and high altitude (Condition). Exploratory correlations were performed to investigate the relationship between changes in physiological measures with high‐altitude ascent and during exercise and changes in cognitive function. There was a significant interaction between altitude and exercise on a test of processing speed, working memory, and visuospatial attention, such that performance worsened following exercise at high altitude (P=0.02). In contrast, task‐switching abilities and inhibitory control remained unchanged after exercise. Higher baseline hemoglobin was associated with a decline in cognitive performance following exercise at high altitude (r= −0.58, P=0.01), whereas higher baseline P ET CO 2 was associated with improved cognitive performance following exercise at high altitude (r=0.54, P=0.03). Interestingly, there was no relationship between AMS scores and changes in cognitive function. In conclusion, acute aerobic exercise performed at high altitude impairs some measures of cognitive function, which may be impacted by physiological acclimatization during ascent. Future work should investigate the persistence of this post‐exercise decrement in cognitive function to help inform recommendations regarding decision‐making behaviors following exercise at high‐altitude. Support or Funding Information NSERC Discovery, NSERC PGS, and Wilderness Medical Society Research In‐Training Award This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".