Abstract
Although aging is accompanied by neurobiological changes and increased susceptibility to many neurological disorders, little is known about neurophysiological changes that start in old age. Here, neurophysiological changes during old age were assessed by recording brain potentials associated with motor preparation and stimulus expectancy (contingent negative variation, CNV) in young-old (60–69), oldest-old (85–98), and young (17–23) subjects. Individual trials began by a button press, followed 2.5 s later by either a low or high pitch tone. In the “motor” condition subjects responded following high pitch tones ( P = 0.20); in the “non-motor” condition subjects did not respond. Motor condition CNV amplitudes in the oldest old were more positive than the young and young-old groups, which were similar. In the non-motor condition, the young-old and oldest-old had similar CNV amplitudes that were positive in polarity, and were significantly different from young subjects. Motor potentials before button presses that started the trials were comparable among groups. Results show that neural activity associated with motor preparation and stimulus expectancy changes during advanced age, and that group differences can be modulated by task requirements.
Highlights
Aging is accompanied by substantial changes in neurobiological and cognitive function
The above findings demonstrate that different cognitive and neurobiological factors exhibit a variety of temporal patterns during the development of age-related changes, and that some changes may only become apparent in early old age
In this study overall contingent negative variation (CNV) amplitudes were significantly different between the three age groups, and the group differences were modulated by task requirements
Summary
Aging is accompanied by substantial changes in neurobiological and cognitive function. Some measures exhibit monotonic changes as a function of age, such as reductions in processing speed inferred from behavioral measures [6,58] and latency of certain brain potentials (P300) [21,27,46]. The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease increases exponentially after approximately age 60 [31], but may decline in the early 90s [40]. Neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease [40] and stroke [54] show a substantially increased incidence after age 60.
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