Acute mountain sickness susceptibility and basic cognitive function after a brief simulated altitude of 4800 m.

Abstract

Twelve climbers with not been exposed in the last 12 months at high altitude were evaluated using verbal, spatial, reasoning and numerical tasks from Thurstone's (1969) Primary Mental Abilities (PMA) test. These tasks were undertaken before and immediately after completing the Richalet et al. (1988) Normobaric Hypoxic (NH) test, which evaluates the acute mountain sickness (AMS) risk using a FiO2 of 11.5% during rest and exercise. A control group of eight climbers did not perform the NH test, so as to rule out the possible learning effect of the PMA test. Four participants (33%) from the experimental group were classified as having high susceptibility to AMS. However, the PMA test performed after the NH test did not significantly differ from the one carried out before the NH test or from the cognitive abilities measured in the control group (p> .05).