摘要
There is a lack of consensus regarding the impact of elevated indoor CO_(2)exposure on cognition.COVID-19 provided an opportunity to study responses to long-term elevated CO_(2)exposure from facemask wear.Such an opportunity allows us to avoid exposing participants to elevated CO_(2)levels not typically experienced in real-life settings,potentially increasing the ecological validity of our experimental design.Further,the worsening warmness during summer necessitates studies and understanding of peoples’cognition with combined stressors of both heat and CO_(2)accumulation.In this work,we recruited 60 college students to understand whether facemask wear elevates local CO_(2)levels and,if so,the extent to which it impacts cognition in warm conditions.Subjects remained in a controlled summer environmental room(temperature 31.5°C,relative humidity 30%)for 90 min with or without facemasks.Participants completed six cognitive tests in a random order and answered surveys using computer-based software.Ten experimental subjects had a second 30 min visit to measure CO_(2)concentration at the ala of the nose with and without surgical masks.The results show that wearing a surgical mask sharply increased CO_(2)concentration near the nose by 15,000 ppm.Our analysis showed that the experimental group with facemask wear did not exhibit significantly different cognition performance except for short-term memory which was higher instead of lower than the control group.Participants with facemask wear showed significantly lower risk-taking,possibly attributed to thermal discomfort.Nevertheless,no significance in cognition or decision-making was observed after controlling the familywise error rate using the Bonferroni correction.We hypothesize that the insignificant difference might be caused by adaptation to long-term wear and high CO_(2)exposure in daily life during COVID-19,which cannot be revealed in the studies prior to the pandemic.
基金
supported by U.S.National Science Foundation(#1931077)Worcester Polytechnic Institute(TRIAD grant)
In addition,this study material is partially based upon work supported by U.S.National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No.2023351618。
