When elderly outperform young adults-integration in vision revealed by the visual mismatch negativity

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Abstract

We studied the possibility of age-related differences of visual integration at an automatic and at a task-related level. Data of 15 young (21.9 ± 1.8 years) and 15 older (66.6 ± 3.5 years) women were analyzed in our experiment. Automatic processing was investigated in a passive oddball paradigm, and the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) of event-related brain potentials was measured. Letters and pseudo-letters were presented either as single characters, or the characters were presented successively in two fragments. In case of simultaneous presentation of the two fragments (whole character) vMMN emerged in both age groups. However, in successive presentation vMMN was elicited only by the deviant pseudo-letters, and only in the older group. The longest stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) in this group was 50 ms, indicating longer information persistence in elderly. In a psychophysical experiment, the task was to indicate, which member of a character pair was a legal letter. Again, the letters and pseudo-letters were presented as fragments. We obtained successful integration at 30 ms (0 ms interstimulus interval), but not at longer SOAs in both age groups, showing that in case of task-relevant stimulation level there was no detectable age-related performance difference. We interpreted the results as the efficiency of local inhibitory circuits is compromised in elderly, leading to longer stimulus persistence, and hence better visual perception in this particular case.

Figures

  • FIGURE 1 | Experimental design. Irrelevant letter and pseudo-letter stimuli appeared within a gray frame with 600 ± 50 ms intertrial interval (ITI). The task was to press a button when the frame became thicker. The irrelevant standard (80%) and deviant (20%) characters were presented as a whole (A) or in two fragments (B) with 30, 50 and 70 ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) (0, 20 and 40 ms interstimulus interval).
  • FIGURE 2 | Event-related potentials (ERPs) in the full stimuli pseudo-letter condition. Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) emerged both in young (upper row) and older adults (lower row) as the deviant minus standard ERP difference wave shows in the 150–300 ms time window.
  • TABLE 1 | Amplitude and latency data of P1 and N1 components (mean and standard deviation) in the various conditions in young and older adults.
  • TABLE 2 | Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) results.
  • FIGURE 3 | Difference waves for pseudo-letters in the four conditions (A) and their scalp distribution (B). vMMN emerged in young adults only in the 0 ms SOA condition, while in older adults in the 0, 30 and 50 ms conditions. Note that ERPs are shown 100 ms before the 1st stimulus in all cases, but time point 0 ms is at the beginning of the 2nd fragment, hence the y axes are at different positions according to the different SOAs.
  • TABLE 3 | Amplitude and latency data of the vMMN (mean and standard deviation) in those conditions in which the deviancy was significant.
  • TABLE 4 | Performance of young and older adults in the EEG task (hit rate in percent—mean with standard deviation).

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APA

Gaál, Z. A., Bodnár, F., & Czigler, I. (2017). When elderly outperform young adults-integration in vision revealed by the visual mismatch negativity. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 9(JAN). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2017.00015

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