Changes in Visual Event-Related Potentials in Older Persons

Age-related changes in early novelty processing as measured by ERPs

“…Also, young subjects have been shown to generate a larger P3a response to novel than target stimuli (Friedman et al, 2001; Spencer et al, 1999), which was not observed for the component under discussion here. In addition, most reports have suggested an age-related decline (Fabiani & Friedman, 1995; Fjell & Walhovd, 2004) or no change in the size of the P3a (Beck et al, 1980; Snyder & Hillyard, 1979) to deviant visual stimuli, which would be inconsistent with the findings of the anterior P2. The nervous system has developed a variety of mechanisms to deal with novelty, which seem to be indexed by different ERP components.…”

“…This often has been interpreted as reflecting age-related changes in prefrontal cortex that lead to a decreased ability to orient attention to novel events or to formulate and maintain templates for the different stimulus types used in the experiment (Fabiani et al, 1998; Fabiani & Friedman, 1995; Fjell & Walhovd, 2004). Interestingly, studies that have employed highly unusual, rather than simple visual stimuli as novels in a 3-stimulus novelty oddball task have tended to report no age-related changes in the overall size of the novelty P3 response (Beck et al, 1980; Snyder and Hillyard, 1979). This finding raises the possibility of a relatively preserved capacity of older individuals to direct attention to novel visual events if they are sufficiently unusual or interesting.…”

“…Studies using visual novelty oddball tasks that have included adult subjects with a wide range of ages have suggested that the anterior P2 is very responsive to perceptual novelty (e.g., highly unusual figures and shapes) (Beck et al, 1980; Knight, 1997; Riis et al, 2008; Snyder & Hillyard, 1979), especially among older adults (Beck et al, 1980; Riis et al, 2008). Such age-related changes have been observed under the traditional visual novelty oddball paradigm (Beck et al, 1980) as well as under a condition in which subjects controlled how long they looked at each visual stimulus (Riis et al, 2008).…”

Age-related differences in early novelty processing: Using PCA to parse the overlapping anterior P2 and N2 components

“…Studies limited to young adults, which have not included perceptually novel stimuli, have emphasized that the P2 is sensitive to task-relevant features and largest in response to target stimuli (Luck & Hillyard, 1994; Potts, Liotti, Tucker, & Posner, 1996; Potts & Tucker, 2001). Investigations that have incorporated older adults and included perceptually novel visual stimuli have reported an enhanced P2 response to novel events, especially among old participants (Beck et al, 1980; Riis et al, 2008; Snyder & Hillyard, 1979). The current study's PCA suggests that the varying results for the P2 component may be due to indexing the activity of two different latent factors within the P2 temporal window.…”

“…Consistent with its role in marking motivational salience, the amplitude of the anterior P2 component has been shown to be sensitive to features specified by instructions as task relevant (Luck & Hillyard, 1994; Potts & Tucker, 2001). There also are reports that stimuli that are perceptually novel (e.g., highly unusual figures and shapes) elicit a large anterior P2, especially in older adults (Beck, Swanson, & Dustman, 1980; Riis et al, 2009; Riis et al, 2008; Snyder & Hillyard, 1979). One hypothesis to account for the age-related increase in the anterior P2 to novel stimuli is that it represents the inability of older adults to inhibit the allocation of resources to non-target stimuli that should not be considered motivationally salient (Alain & Woods, 1999; Amenedo & Diaz, 1998; Gazzaley, Cooney, Rissman, & D'Esposito, 2005; Rabbitt, 1965).…”