Performance, Mood, and Anxiety During a Climb of Mount Everest

Karinen, Heikki M., and Martti T. Tuomisto. Performance, mood, and anxiety during a climb of Mount Everest. High Alt Med Biol. 18:400-410, 2017.

Various studies have shown the deleterious effects of high-altitude hypoxia on visual, motor, somatosensory, cognitive, and emotional function and also in intelligence tests, reaction time, speech comprehension, hand steadiness, visual contrast discrimination, and word association tests. Because optimal cognitive abilities may be crucial for mountain climbers' safety, this study was intended to evaluate the changes in cognitive performance, mood, and anxiety during an Everest expedition lasting almost 3 months.

A set of physiological (Lake Louise score, oxygen saturation), cognitive (Colorado perceptual speed [CPS] test, number comparison [NC] test), and emotional measurements (Profile of Mood States, anxiety responses, psychological inflexibility) were collected from nine climbers on a partly unsupported Mount Everest expedition at various time points during the course of the expedition at Everest Base Camp (EBC). For confidence intervals we used 95% simultaneous Bonferroni corrected interval (BCI) for the differences.

During this expedition, the estimates of trait anxiety decreased 13% toward the end of expedition after successful summiting (p = 0.004). Simultaneously, fatigue appeared to diminish and the CPS speed results improved 13%. Most expedition members suffered mild symptoms of acute mountain sickness during the first days in the EBC, but this did not affect the speed or the number of mistakes made in the CPS or NC tests. In CPS test the differences between pretest and the physically most demanding period (EBC4, BCI: 0.01, 4.43) and between EBC1 and EBC4 (BCI: 0.57, 4.99), between EBC2 and EBC4 (BCI: 0.45, 4.88), and between EBC3 and EBC4 (BCI: 1.12, 5.55) were significant, showing ever improving results during the expedition.

The most important finding in this study was that well-motivated and trained, self-selected individuals, who volunteer for a long-duration mission, are capable of maintaining high levels of performance, steady mood state, and a good level of vigor on a Mount Everest expedition lasting nearly 3 months.