Age related effects on working memory: event-related potential differences between high and low performing old and young adults
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1
University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands
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2
Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, Netherlands
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3
Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands
Most studies on age-related changes in cognition focused on differences between groups of young and old adults and did not study variability within groups. However, some old adults show lower performance during cognitive tasks, others achieve performance comparable to young adults. To examine whether age-related effects on behavioral and event related potential (ERP) measures depend on performance level, we recorded an electroencephalogram from 37 young (18-26 years) and 36 old (60-74 years) healthy adults, during an n-back task with two loads (0- and 1-back) and two versions (identity and integrated). Participants were split in high and low performers. As expected, we found that high performing elderly (HPE) were faster and more accurate than low performing elderly (LPE). This variability in performance was reflected in higher P3 amplitude for high performing young, followed by low performing young, LPE and the lowest P3 amplitude for HPE. Moreover, brain activity in elderly was characterized by frontal hyperactivity and parietal hypoactivity, lasting from 100 ms until 900 ms post-stimulus. Other ERP differences related to task load and version, age and performance level, started at early visual encoding stages and persisted. We thus found that age related effects on ERP measures differed between high and low performers. The frontal hyperactivity and lower P3 amplitude might indicate that elderly perceive the task as more demanding and engage more effort to maintain performance. In HPE this indeed resulted in adequate performance levels. Although LPE also devoted effort to the task as reflected in the ERP results, this did not improve their performance. These results might suggest that the elderly differ in efficiency with which age related decline can be compensated.
Keywords:
Aging,
ERP
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Cognitive Aging
Citation:
Saliasi
E,
Geerligs
L,
Lorist
MM and
Maurits
NM
(2011). Age related effects on working memory: event-related potential differences between high and low performing old and young adults.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00615
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Received:
15 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Emi Saliasi, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands, e.saliasi@neuro.umcg.nl