Deficits in Visual Processing During Hypoxia as Evidenced by Visual Mismatch Negativity

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Hypoxia is an ever-present threat in tactical aviation and gained recent attention due to its putative role in physiological episodes. Previous work has demonstrated that hypoxia negatively impacts a variety of sensory, cognitive, and motor systems. In particular, the visual system is one of the earliest systems affected by hypoxia. While the majority of previous studies have relied on self-report and behavioral testing, the use of event-related potentials as a novel tool to monitor responses to low oxygen in humans has recently been investigated. Specifically, ERP components that are evoked passively in response to unattended changes in background sensory stimulation have been explored.METHOD: Subjects (N 28) completed a continuous visuomotor tracking task while EEG was recorded. During the tracking task, a series of standard color checkerboard patterns were presented in the periphery while occasionally a deviant color checkerboard was presented. The visual mismatch negativity (MMN) component was assessed in response to the deviant compared to the standard stimuli. Subjects completed two sessions in counterbalanced order that only differed by the oxygen concentration breathed (10.6% vs. 20.4%).RESULTS: Results demonstrated a significant reduction in the amplitude of the visual MMN under hypoxic compared to normoxic conditions, showing a 50% reduction in amplitude during hypoxia. Our results suggest that during low-oxygen exposure the ability to detect environmental changes and process sensory information is impaired.DISCUSSION: The visual MMN may represent an early and reliable predictor of sensory and cognitive deficits during hypoxia exposure, which may be of great use to the aviation community.Blacker KJ, Seech TR, Funke ME, Kinney MJ. Deficits in visual processing during hypoxia as evidenced by visual mismatch negativity. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2021; 92(5):326332.

Effects of Acute Hypoxia on Early Visual and Auditory Evoked Potentials

“…The MMN/P3a complex is a reliable neural index of automatic and preattentive stages of information processing. Previous work has demonstrated that these ERPs are disrupted both within the auditory ( Seech et al, 2020 ; Blacker and McHail, 2021 ) and visual ( Blacker et al, 2021 ) domains. Broadly speaking, ERPs are often classified as “cognitive” or “sensory” ERPs.…”

“…Previous work has demonstrated that hypoxic exposure disrupts the mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a event-related potentials (ERP; Seech et al, 2020 ; Blacker and McHail, 2021 ; Blacker et al, 2021 ). The MMN/P3a complex is a reliable neural index of automatic and preattentive stages of information processing.…”

Visual Mismatch Negativity: A Mini-Review of Non-pathological Studies With Special Populations and Stimuli

“…Hunger increased sensitivity to food-related deviant stimuli (Sultson et al, 2019 ), but instead of nutrition quality, the saliency of particular foods (hamburger in the study) elicited the largest effect. In the case of hypoxia, vMMN amplitude decreased (Blacker et al, 2021 ), but the difference was small. Regular physical activity had no effect on vMMN amplitude (Pesonen et al, 2019 ), but it reduced vMMN latency.…”

“…As we argued earlier (Czigler, 2007 ), in such an arrangement, participants can discover that, during the presentation of vMMN-related stimuli, there are no task-related changes; therefore, from time to time, they can observe the task-irrelevant events. Only a few studies applied continuous tasks such as tracking (Blacker et al, 2021 ; Petro et al, 2021 ) or a 2-back task (Sultson et al, 2019 ). What is really needed is research comparing vMMN to identical deviants in sequences with various task-related events.…”

“…Interestingly, one of the highfat savory foods, i.e., the hamburger, elicited a larger effect than the rest of the food stimuli. Blacker et al (2021) analyzed 24 young participants under normoxia (20.4% O 2 ) and hypoxia (10.6% O 2 , corresponding to ∼5,300 m altitude). Participants performed a tracking task with centrally presented events, while the vMMN-related stimuli, i.e., isoluminant green-black and red-black checkerboards, appeared on two lateral displays.…”