The neural correlates of visual working memory decline in normal aging

Abstract

Although older adults show impaired behavioral performance on a task measuring VWM capacity, their ERP measures indicate that they can maintain a similar amount of information in VWM as younger adults. Further work can determine whether processes like retrieval or comparison contribute to impaired VWM-related behavior in older adults. Visual working memory (VWM) enables one to hold a limited amount of visual information for several seconds. Behavioral studies have indicated that VWM capacity is reduced over the course of normal aging (Brockmole et al., 2008). Research using electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure aspects of VWM have shown that inefficient VWM filtering (Jost et al., 2008) and changes in VWM encoding (Stormer et al., CNS 2012) may contribute to this age-related VWM capacity reduction. In the current study, we asked: Do the ERP correlates of VWM maintenance in healthy older adults differ from that of healthy younger adults?