Investigating Auditory Perception at Europe's Highest Mountain Lodge

Altitude hypoxia can impair sensory and cognitive functions, from causing slowed responses to sensory hallucinations. In a field study, we tested 12 expeditioners at varied altitudes (low: 1696 m; high: 4556 m) with a simple auditory detection task and a dichotic listening paradigm in which a voice was presented, lateralized, within a binaural white noise stream. Slower reaction times and a reduced right ear advantage might be expected at high (vs. low) altitude, due to hypoxia. The participants' performances on both tasks did not differ between conditions, revealing that these functions are resistant to short-term hypoxia in young healthy adults.