scholarly journals Older Adults Automatically Detect Age of Older Adults’ Photographs: A Visual Mismatch Negativity Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Csizmadia ◽  
Bela Petro ◽  
Petia Kojouharova ◽  
Zsófia Anna Gaál ◽  
Katalin Scheiling ◽  
...  

The human face is one of the most frequently used stimuli in vMMN (visual mismatch negativity) research. Previous studies showed that vMMN is sensitive to facial emotions and gender, but investigations of age-related vMMN differences are relatively rare. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the models’ age in photographs were automatically detected, even if the photographs were not parts of the ongoing task. Furthermore, we investigated age-related differences, and the possibility of different sensitivity to photographs of participants’ own versus different ages. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to faces of young and old models in younger (N = 20; 18–30 years) and older groups (N = 20; 60–75 years). The faces appeared around the location of the field of a tracking task. In sequences the young or the old faces were either frequent (standards) or infrequent (deviants). According to the results, a regular sequence of models’ age is automatically registered, and faces violating the models’ age elicited the vMMN component. However, in this study vMMN emerged only in the older group to same-age deviants. This finding is explained by the less effective inhibition of irrelevant stimuli in the elderly, and corresponds to own-age bias effect of recognition studies.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Seçkin Arslan ◽  
Katerina Palasis ◽  
Fanny Meunier

Abstract This study reports on an event-related potentials experiment to uncover whether per-millisecond electrophysiological brain activity and analogous behavioural responses are age-sensitive when comprehending anaphoric (referent-first) and cataphoric (pronoun-first) pronouns. Two groups of French speakers were recruited (young n = 18; aged 19–35 and older adults n = 15; aged 57–88) to read sentences where the anaphoric/cataphoric pronouns and their potential referents either matched or mismatched in gender. Our findings indicate that (1) the older adults were not less accurate or slower in their behavioural responses to the mismatches than the younger adults, (2) both anaphoric and cataphoric conditions evoked a central/parietally distributed P600 component with similar timing and amplitude in both the groups. Importantly, mean amplitudes of the P600 effect were modulated by verbal short-term memory span in the older adults but not in the younger adults, (3) nevertheless, the older but not the younger adults displayed an additional anterior negativity emerging on the frontal regions in response to the anaphoric mismatches. These results suggest that pronoun processing is resilient in healthy ageing individuals, but that functional recruitment of additional brain regions, evidenced with the anterior negativity, compensates for increased processing demands in the older adults’ anaphora processing.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Kai Chang ◽  
I-Hua Chu ◽  
Jen-Hao Liu ◽  
Chih-Han Wu ◽  
Chien-Heng Chu ◽  
...  

This study explored the effects of exercise modality and type of fitness index on cognitive function in the older adults as assessed via behavioral and neuroelectrical approaches. Sixty older adults were assigned to an aerobic exercise, a coordination exercise, or a control group based on their previous exercise experience. The participants completed congruent and incongruent trials of a modified Stroop Test, during which, event-related potentials were recorded. The participants also completed multiple physical tests that assessed health- and skill-related fitness. Our findings suggest that, in general, both aerobic and coordination exercise, as well as higher scores on health- and skill-related fitness indices, are positively associated with better performance of various cognitive functions in the elderly population. The mechanisms underlying these relationships may be differentially related to specific neuroelectrical processes involved in neurocognitive control.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2323
Author(s):  
Elizabeth R. Paitel ◽  
Kristy A. Nielson

Aging is accompanied by frontal lobe and non-dominant hemisphere recruitment that supports executive functioning, such as inhibitory control, which is crucial to all cognitive functions. However, the spatio-temporal sequence of processing underlying successful inhibition and how it changes with age is understudied. Thus, we capitalized on the temporal precision of event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess the functional lateralization of N200 (conflict monitoring) and P300 (inhibitory performance evaluation) in young and healthy older adults during comparably performed successful stop-signal inhibition. We additionally used temporal principal components analysis (PCA) to further interrogate the continuous spatio-temporal dynamics underlying N200 and P300 activation for each group. Young adults demonstrated left hemisphere-dominant N200, while older adults demonstrated overall larger amplitudes and right hemisphere dominance. N200 activation was explained by a single PCA factor in both age groups, but with a more anterior scalp distribution in older adults. The P300 amplitudes were larger in the right hemisphere in young, but bilateral in old, with old larger than young in the left hemisphere. P300 was also explained by a single factor in young adults but by two factors in older adults, including distinct parieto-occipital and anterior activation. These findings highlight the differential functional asymmetries of conflict monitoring (N200) and inhibitory evaluation and adaptation (P300) processes and further illuminate unique age-related spatio-temporal recruitment patterns. Older adults demonstrated lateralized recruitment during conflict processing and bilateral recruitment during evaluation and adaptation, with anterior recruitment common to both processes. These fine-grained analyses are critically important for more precise understanding of age-related compensatory activation.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth R Paitel ◽  
Kristy A Nielson

Aging is accompanied by frontal lobe and non-dominant hemisphere recruitment that supports executive functioning, such as inhibitory control, which is crucial to all cognitive functions. Yet, the spatio-temporal sequence of processing underlying successful inhibition and how it changes with age is understudied. Thus, we assessed N200 (conflict monitoring) and P300 (response inhibition, performance evaluation) event-related potentials (ERPs) in young and healthy older adults during comparably performed successful stop-signal inhibition. We additionally interrogated the continuous spatio-temporal dynamics of N200- and P300-related activation within each group. Young adults had left hemisphere dominant N200, while older adults had overall larger amplitudes and right hemisphere dominance. N200 activation was biphasic in both groups but differed in scalp topography. P300 also differed, with larger right amplitudes in young, but bilateral amplitudes in old, with old larger than young in the left hemisphere. P300 was characterized by an early parieto-occipital peak in both groups, followed by a parietal slow wave only in older adults. A temporally similar but topographically different final wave followed in both groups that showed anterior recruitment in older adults. These findings illuminate differential age-related spatio-temporal recruitment patterns for conflict monitoring and response inhibition that are critically important for understanding age-related compensatory activation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Wascher ◽  
Stephan Getzmann

Deficient information processing with increasing age has been assigned to reduced efficiency in frontal executive control functions. Dopamine has been assumed to play a central role for this decline. Dopamine, however, is also essential for the maintenance of motivation for a longer period of time and is therefore a core factor for mental fatigue. Combining these two findings, we tested to what degree older adults are more prone to performance loss due to increasing time on task than younger adults. Twelve younger and twelve older participants performed an inhibition of return task for 80 min. Performance declined in the older participants but not in the young. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of the EEG, however, showed distinct changes with time on task primarily for young participants. The dissociation between behavioral and ERP results indicates that changes in ERPs of the young participants could reflect adaptations to the task rather than fatigue. This is evident from very distinct changes of the posterior N1 component in this group. The failing (or rather unspecific) adaptation to the task in older adults might have been a consequence of lacking frontal executive control functions reflected in a massive reduction of the N2 component of the ERP, relative to the young participants.


2021 ◽  
Vol 92 (5) ◽  
pp. 326-332
Author(s):  
Kara J. Blacker ◽  
Todd R. Seech ◽  
Matthew E. Funke ◽  
Micah J. Kinney

INTRODUCTION: Hypoxia is an ever-present threat in tactical aviation and gained recent attention due to its putative role in physiological episodes. Previous work has demonstrated that hypoxia negatively impacts a variety of sensory, cognitive, and motor systems. In particular, the visual system is one of the earliest systems affected by hypoxia. While the majority of previous studies have relied on self-report and behavioral testing, the use of event-related potentials as a novel tool to monitor responses to low oxygen in humans has recently been investigated. Specifically, ERP components that are evoked passively in response to unattended changes in background sensory stimulation have been explored.METHOD: Subjects (N 28) completed a continuous visuomotor tracking task while EEG was recorded. During the tracking task, a series of standard color checkerboard patterns were presented in the periphery while occasionally a deviant color checkerboard was presented. The visual mismatch negativity (MMN) component was assessed in response to the deviant compared to the standard stimuli. Subjects completed two sessions in counterbalanced order that only differed by the oxygen concentration breathed (10.6% vs. 20.4%).RESULTS: Results demonstrated a significant reduction in the amplitude of the visual MMN under hypoxic compared to normoxic conditions, showing a 50% reduction in amplitude during hypoxia. Our results suggest that during low-oxygen exposure the ability to detect environmental changes and process sensory information is impaired.DISCUSSION: The visual MMN may represent an early and reliable predictor of sensory and cognitive deficits during hypoxia exposure, which may be of great use to the aviation community.Blacker KJ, Seech TR, Funke ME, Kinney MJ. Deficits in visual processing during hypoxia as evidenced by visual mismatch negativity. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2021; 92(5):326332.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 829-850 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Koen ◽  
Erin D. Horne ◽  
Nedra Hauck ◽  
Michael D. Rugg

Prestimulus subsequent memory effects (preSMEs)—differences in neural activity elicited by a task cue at encoding that are predictive of later memory performance—are thought to reflect differential engagement of preparatory processes that benefit episodic memory encoding. We investigated age differences in preSMEs indexed by differences in ERP amplitude just before the onset of a study item. Young and older adults incidentally encoded words for a subsequent memory test. Each study word was preceded by a task cue that signaled a judgment to perform on the word. Words were presented for either a short (300 msec) or long (1000 msec) duration with the aim of placing differential benefits on engaging preparatory processes initiated by the task cue. ERPs associated with subsequent successful and unsuccessful recollection, operationalized here by source memory accuracy, were estimated time-locked to the onset of the task cue. In a late time window (1000–2000 msec after onset of the cue), young adults demonstrated frontally distributed preSMEs for both the short and long study durations, albeit with opposite polarities in the two conditions. This finding suggests that preSMEs in young adults are sensitive to perceived task demands. Although older adults showed no evidence of preSMEs in the same late time window, significant preSMEs were observed in an earlier time window (500–1000 msec) that was invariant with study duration. These results are broadly consistent with the proposal that older adults differ from their younger counterparts in how they engage preparatory processes during memory encoding.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 147470491881214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shu Zhang ◽  
Hailing Wang ◽  
Qingke Guo

Facial attractiveness plays important roles in social interaction. Electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies found several brain areas to be differentially responsive to attractive relative to unattractive faces. However, little is known about the time course of the information processing, especially under the unattended condition. Based on a “cross-modal delayed response” paradigm, the present study aimed to explore the automatic mechanism of facial attractiveness processing of females with different physiological cycles and males, respectively, through recording the event-related potentials in response to (un)attractive opposite-sex faces by two experiments. The attractiveness-related visual mismatch negativity (attractiveness vMMN) in posterior scalp distribution was recorded in both the experiments, which indicated that attractive faces could be processed automatically. And high-attractive opposite-sex faces can elicit larger vMMN in males than females in menstrual period in Study 1, but similar as females in ovulatory period in Study 2. Furthermore, by comparison, the latency of attractiveness vMMN in females with the ovulatory period was the longest. These results indicated as follows: (1) Males were more sensitive to attractive female faces, (2) females in ovulatory period were also attracted by the attractive male faces, (3) the long vMMN latency in females during ovulatory period suggested a special reproductive motivation to avoid being tainted by genes, which takes priority over the breeding motivation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Tao Yang ◽  
Caroline Di Bernardi Luft ◽  
Pei Sun ◽  
Joydeep Bhattacharya ◽  
Michael J. Banissy

Previous research suggests declines in emotion perception in older as compared to younger adults, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we address this by investigating how “face-age” and “face emotion intensity” affect both younger and older participants’ behavioural and neural responses using event-related potentials (ERPs). Sixteen young and fifteen older adults viewed and judged the emotion type of facial images with old or young face-age and with high- or low- emotion intensities while EEG was recorded. The ERP results revealed that young and older participants exhibited significant ERP differences in two neural clusters: the left frontal and centromedial regions (100–200 ms stimulus onset) and frontal region (250–900 ms) when perceiving neutral faces. Older participants also exhibited significantly higher ERPs within these two neural clusters during anger and happiness emotion perceptual tasks. However, while this pattern of activity supported neutral emotion processing, it was not sufficient to support the effective processing of facial expressions of anger and happiness as older adults showed reductions in performance when perceiving these emotions. These age-related changes are consistent with theoretical models of age-related changes in neurocognitive abilities and may reflect a general age-related cognitive neural compensation in older adults, rather than a specific emotion-processing neural compensation.


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