Special environments, such as desert, polar, plateau, submarine, and diving, may affect the cognitive functions, quality of life and work status and even life safety of the exposed individuals. The degree of cognitive impacts is related to the durance of exposure, the intensity of stress, the complexity of cognitive tasks and some individual factors. Troops are always stationed in the special environments mentioned above, and the cognitive function of military personnel is greatly affected by the environment. Differences in experimental designs, sample sizes, selected environmental stressors, cognitive function indicators and measurement tools between different researches can, lead to various results. Future researches in this field should improve the existing shortcomings, focus on the mechanism of cognitive function changes, and explore intervention strategies to reduce the adverse impacts of special environments on cognitive functions of military personnel.