ArticleFrontiers in neuroscience2026
High-altitude hypoxia alters the developmental trajectory of working memory in Tibetan children.
Article in Frontiers in neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Verbal working memory (WM) undergoes rapid development during school age, yet the impact of high-altitude hypoxia on this trajectory remains unclear. We propose two distinct models: the simple additive model, which posits that hypoxia imposes a uniform impairment independent of age, preserving developmental gains; the developmental trajectory reconfiguration model, which posits that hypoxia alters the typical age-related progression of WM. To test these models and explore related physiological factors, we examined WM performance and blood pressure (BP) in school-aged children across different altitudes. Methods: A 2 × 3 between-subjects design was used, involving 535 Zang (Tibetan) students (273 fourth graders, 262 eighth graders) from three altitudes (2,200, 3,200, and 4,200 m) in Qinghai, China. WM was assessed using the Digit Span Backward (DSB) task, and BP was measured with a wrist-type electronic sphygmomanometer. Results: We found a significant main effect of altitude on WM [ Conclusion: High-altitude hypoxia alters the developmental trajectory of verbal WM in Tibetan children, as evidenced by the disappearance of the typical grade advantage at higher altitudes and the altitude-dependent moderating role of DBP. These findings support the developmental trajectory reconfiguration model and highlight the physiological relevance of blood pressure in altitude-related cognitive development.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.