The effects of age on auditory event-related potentials

Abstract

The effects of age on event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited during a two-tone discrimination ("oddball") task were examined in 97 normal subjects aged from 17-80 years. Strong relationships were found between age and the latencies of the later ERP components N200 and P300. Furthermore the correlation between age and N200 latency at Pz was marginally higher than that of age and P300 latency. For the entire sample, the increase in P300 latency as a function of age was best described at Cz and Pz by linear regression equations. However, a segmented line model better described the P300/age relationship at Fz--the increase in P300 latency with age in subjects over 61 was five times that of subjects younger than 61 years. In this study the task required button-press identification of the targets--the significance of increased age and a delay in N200 latency is discussed with reference to the possibility of N200 latency indexing the speed of cognitive processing.

Classification of Passive Auditory Event-Related Potentials Using Discriminant Analysis and Self-Organizing Feature Maps

“…In studies on aging effects of ERP [Coyle et al, 1991;Fuchigami et al, 1993], latency shifts were found with a typical shortening towards adulthood, whereas amplitude shifts were less important. Thus, latencies were not evaluated in this study to avoid bias from aging.…”

“…It is known that aging effects predominantly involve peak latencies [Coyle et al, 1991;Fuchigami et al, 1993]. For this reason, latencies were not evaluated in this study; amplitudes were used instead.…”

“…Second, for active oddball paradigms, the subject's appropriate understanding of the task and attention to the stimuli is necessary. Third, the cognitive P 3 component strongly relates to age and developmental factors [Coyle et al, 1991;Polich, 1996].…”

The Event-Related P300 Potential Analysis of Cognitive Human Brain Aging: A Review

“…This was found for auditory as well as visual P300 paradigms. Interestingly, these age-related N200 latency prolongations ranging between 0.65 ms/year [83] and 0.90 ms/year [95] were smaller than those found for the P300 latencies but greater than that reported for the early 'exogenous' compo nents such as the N 1 and P2 [52], This finding is in good agreement with the general rule that the shorter the latency range of the compo nents, the smaller is the age-related latency prolongation, and vice versa. Furthermore, it also supports the above-mentioned assumpTable2.…”

“…The relationship between P300 pa rameters and age may be described by differ ent mathematical models. While some au thors consider one linear regression function to be most suitable for both the P300 ampli tude and P300 latency from early adulthood to old age [52] [95] also found that the comparative analysis of linear regres sion functions in different age groups is most efficient and exponential regression models do not yield additional information.…”