# Wearing a KN95/FFP2 facemask has no measureable effect on functional activity in a challenging working memory n-back task

## TL;DR

Wearing a KN95/FFP2 mask does not affect working memory performance or brain activity during a challenging task.

## Contribution

This study is the first to use fMRI to show that tight facemasks do not impact working memory performance or brain activation.

## Key findings

- Wearing a KN95/FFP2 mask did not affect response time or errors in a 2-back working memory task.
- Brain activation patterns in working memory areas were similar with and without the mask.
- No significant differences were found in functional connectivity analyses between mask and no-mask conditions.

## Abstract

Wide use of facemasks is one of the many consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We used an established working memory n-back task in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore whether wearing a KN95/FFP2 facemask affects overall performance and brain activation patterns. We provide here a prospective crossover design 3 T fMRI study with/without wearing a tight FFP2/KN95 facemask, including 24 community-dwelling male healthy control participants (mean age ± SD = 37.6 ± 12.7 years) performing a 2-back task. Data analysis was performed using the FSL toolbox, performing both task-related and functional connectivity independent component analyses.

Wearing an FFP2/KN95 facemask did not impact behavioral measures of the 2-back task (response time and number of errors). The 2-back task resulted in typical activations in working-memory related areas in both MASK and NOMASK conditions. There were no statistically significant differences in MASK versus NOMASK while performing the 2-back task in both task-related and functional connectivity fMRI analyses.

The effect of wearing a tight FFP2/KN95 facemasks did not significantly affect working memory performance and brain activation patterns of functional connectivity.