LAUSR

Cognitive impairment caused by repetitive subconcussion has been received increasing attention in recent years. While the dysfunction of attention has been confirmed by neuropsychological research using scales, there is no event-related potentials (ERPs) research. Attention network (ANT) has been widely used to evaluate the three separate components of attention processing (alerting, orienting, and executive control). Twenty-seven paratroopers exposed to repetitive subconcussion (subconcussion group) and twenty-five matched health controls participants (HCs group) were enrolled, and all of them performed the ANT test while continuous scalp electroencephalography (EEG) data were recorded. On the behavioral performance level, subconcussion group showed a slower task response, especially significant slower reaction time in the alerting. Concerning ERP results, reduction amplitudes of cue-N1 in alerting network were observed, indicating that this group was less able to make efficient use of cues and maintain an alerting state for incoming information. For orienting network, no difference in the N1 amplitude was observed between the two groups. Moreover, there was a reduced P3 amplitude in executive control network in subconcussion group compared with HCs group, suggesting that the dysfunction of attentional resource allocation and inhibition control in the former group. This study is, to our knowledge, the first analysis of the altered attention network caused by repetitive subconcussion from the perspectives of behavioral and neuropsychology levels. These results preliminary revealed the possible damage of alerting and executive control networks and provided a reference for further research on subconcussion cognitive impairment.