{"title":"Ambient air, oxygen and nitrox effects on cognitive performance at altitude.","authors":"J Leach, S Almond","doi":"10.2114/jpa.18.175","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The effects on cognitive performance of breathing air, oxygen and nitrox gas mixtures at surface ambient pressures were investigated during an expedition to the Everest region of Nepal. A slight improvement in grammatical reasoning at altitude was found under nitrox (p < 0.05) and mathematical reasoning showed improvement at altitude on air (p < 0.05), oxygen (p < 0.01) and nitrox (p < 0.01). There were non-significant trends towards decreasing mathematical ability, coupled with an increase in variance on both grammatical and mathematical test performance, with increasing pO2 (all p > 0.05). The results suggest that there is a subtle interaction on cognition as indicated by a significant three-way interaction between subject x altitude x gas (p < 0.05).</p>","PeriodicalId":79317,"journal":{"name":"Applied human science : journal of physiological anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"1999-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2114/jpa.18.175","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Applied human science : journal of physiological anthropology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2114/jpa.18.175","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
The effects on cognitive performance of breathing air, oxygen and nitrox gas mixtures at surface ambient pressures were investigated during an expedition to the Everest region of Nepal. A slight improvement in grammatical reasoning at altitude was found under nitrox (p < 0.05) and mathematical reasoning showed improvement at altitude on air (p < 0.05), oxygen (p < 0.01) and nitrox (p < 0.01). There were non-significant trends towards decreasing mathematical ability, coupled with an increase in variance on both grammatical and mathematical test performance, with increasing pO2 (all p > 0.05). The results suggest that there is a subtle interaction on cognition as indicated by a significant three-way interaction between subject x altitude x gas (p < 0.05).