Overactive Performance Monitoring Resulting from Chronic Exposure to High Altitude

The neural mechanisms underlying the influence of chronic exposure to high altitude on performance monitoring are not clear. We investigated performance monitoring in the context of chronic exposure to high altitude.

A go/no-go task was used to obtain event-related potentials (ERP). The error-related negativity (ERN), correct-related negativity (CRN), and error positivity (Pe) components were measured in high-altitude and low-altitude groups. The high-altitude group had lived at high altitude for 3 yr, but were born and raised at low altitude, whereas the low-altitude group had lived at low altitude only.

The ERN amplitudes were larger in the high-altitude group compared with the low-altitude group (-14.00 ± 8.34 μV vs. -7.82 ± 8.42 μV, respectively). Moreover, the CRN amplitudes were larger in the high-altitude group (3.51 ± 4.50 μV vs. 8.65 ± 3.23 μV, respectively). Group differences were not significant for the Pe component.

These results suggest that chronic exposure to high altitude can cause overactive performance monitoring in the high-altitude group, but the later stage of error monitoring was not influenced.