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Despite accumulating evidence suggesting the tight relationship between human conscious experiences and cardiopulmonary metabolism, the psychophysiological basis underlying this relationship remains unclear. In this study, we present the hypothesis that the oxygen-delivering efficacy of the cardiopulmonary metabolism contributes to the conscious experiences.

Method:

To test this hypothesis, we carried out a large cohort of investigations with regards to mental imagery, to highlight the connection of visual imagery vividness with oxygen‐delivering ability in an organism. The properties of the red blood cells, under the control of immune cells, played significant roles in this phenomenon. Additionally, we combined the hyperbaric oxygen treatment approach and the conscious awareness detection tasks to demonstrate that the improved cardiopulmonary metabolism accelerated and promoted the processing and strength of conscious awareness along with the intensified attention executive control ability.

Results:

The results provided experimental evidence for the association of cardiopulmonary metabolism with consciousness, in conjunction with the executive role of mental imagery.

Discussion:

Overall, the data highlights the essential role of the oxygen available in the body, in the integrity of cardiopulmonary metabolism, which is related to consciousness, and further implies that the internal consciousness experience may exhibit executive control in psychology and physiology homeostasis.

Open Access Research Article Issue

Overactive alerting attention function in immigrants to high-altitude Tibet

Hailin Ma, Xinjuan Zhang, Yan Wang, Huifang Ma, Yahua Cheng, Feng Zhang, Ming Liu, Delong Zhang

Stress and Brain 2021, 1 (1): 76-95

Published: 22 March 2021

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The present study combined the attention network test and event-related potential approaches to investigate the neurocognitive expression of resource reduction on attention function as a result of long-term high-altitude exposure in immigrants of Tibet. When compared with low-altitude residents, the study found that high-altitude exposure decreased executive-control behavioral performance but enhanced the alerting response. Correspondingly, changes in the target N2 and P3 amplitudes indicated a decrease in conflict inhibition underlying the executive-control network. Instead, the study noted that high-altitude exposure induced additional attentional resources to the alerting stage from the aspect of a change in the cue/target N1 and P1 amplitudes, which may be derived from a reduced self-referencing function. Taken together, the current findings provided experimental evidence for the tight relationship between reduced general cognitive inhibition to the hypersensitivity of the altering attention network to external stimuli mainly observed in immigrants to Tibet.

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