Abstract
Aging is usually accompanied by alterations of cognitive control functions such as conflict processing. Recent research suggests that aging effects on cognitive control seem to vary with degree and source of conflict, and conflict specific aging effects on performance measures as well as neural activation patterns have been shown. However, there is sparse information whether and how aging affects different stages of conflict processing as indicated by event related potentials (ERPs) such as the P2, N2 and P3 components. In the present study, 19 young and 23 elderly adults performed a combined Flanker conflict and stimulus-response-conflict (SRC) task. Analysis of the reaction times (RTs) revealed an increased SRC related conflict effect in elderly. ERP analysis furthermore demonstrated an age-related increase of the P2 amplitude in response to the SRC task. In addition, elderly adults exhibited an increased P3 amplitude modulation induced by incongruent SRC and Flanker conflict trials.
Highlights
With increasing age several alterations of the brain such as changes of brain structure, different transmitter systems and the accumulation of pathological processes become evident
In a recent fMRI study (Korsch et al, 2014) we demonstrated differential effects of aging on the neural substrates of SRC and Flanker conflict processing: we found that elderly adults exhibited extended activation when compared to their younger peers in response to the Flanker conflict, both groups recruited similar regions such as caudate nucleus, frontal and occipital regions
We introduced a combined Flanker and SRC conflict task to investigate how aging affects different processing stages of conflict processing and whether these effects are specific for different conflict types
Summary
With increasing age several alterations of the brain such as changes of brain structure, different transmitter systems and the accumulation of pathological processes become evident (see Park and Reuter-Lorenz, 2009). Cognitive functions that are linked to the prefrontal cortex such as interference control are highly susceptible to aging processes. Interference control refers to the ability to inhibit the processing of irrelevant information and incorrect reactions. While congruent Flanker stimuli usually facilitate fast and correct responses, trials with incongruent stimulus input are associated with increased reaction times (RTs) and higher error rates.
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