The Effects of Aging on Conflict Detection

Several cognitive changes characterize normal aging; one change regards inhibitory processing and includes both conflict monitoring and response suppression. We attempted to segregate these two aspects within a Go/No-go task, investigating three age categories. Accuracy, response times and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The ERP data were analyzed, and the Go and No-go trials were separated; in addition, the trials were organized in repeat trials (in which the subjects repeated the action delivered in the previous trial) and switch trials (in which the subjects produced a response opposite to the previous response). We assumed that the switch trials conveyed more conflict than the repeat trials. In general, the behavioral data and slower P3 latencies confirmed the well-known age-related speed/accuracy trade-off. The novel analyses of the repeat vs. switch trials indicated that the age-related P3 slowing was significant only for the high conflict condition; the switch-P3 amplitude increased only in the two older groups. The ‘aging switch effect’ on the P3 component suggests a failure in the conflict conditions and likely contributes to a generalized dysfunction. The absence of either a switch effect in the young group and the P3 slowing in middle-aged group indicate that switching was not particularly demanding for these participants. The N2 component was less sensitive to the repeat/switch manipulation; however, the subtractive waves also enhanced the age effects in this earlier time window. The topographic maps showed other notable age effects: the frontal No-go N2 was nearly undetectable in the elderly; in the identical time window, a large activity in the posterior and prefrontal scalp regions was observed. Moreover, the prefrontal activity showed a negative correlation with false alarms. These results suggest that the frontal involvement during action suppression becomes progressively dysfunctional with aging, and additional activity was required to reach a good level of accuracy.

[1]  R. C. Oldfield.  The assessment and analysis of handedness: the Edinburgh inventory. , 1971, Neuropsychologia.

[2]  Michael Falkenstein,et al.  Effects of aging, Parkinson's disease, and dopaminergic medication on response selection and control , 2011, Neurobiology of Aging.

[3]  S. Hillyard,et al.  Cortical sources of the early components of the visual evoked potential , 2002, Human brain mapping.

[4]  Shu-Chen Li,et al.  An electrophysiological study of response conflict processing across the lifespan: Assessing the roles of conflict monitoring, cue utilization, response anticipation, and response suppression , 2010, Neuropsychologia.

[5]  L. Jonkman,et al.  The development of preparation, conflict monitoring and inhibition from early childhood to young adulthood; a Go/Nogo ERP study , 2006, Brain Research.

[6]  R. O’Connell,et al.  A simultaneous ERP/fMRI investigation of the P300 aging effect , 2012, Neurobiology of Aging.

[7]  Adam Gazzaley,et al.  Top‐Down Modulation and Normal Aging , 2007, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[8]  G. McCarthy,et al.  Augmenting mental chronometry: the P300 as a measure of stimulus evaluation time. , 1977, Science.

[9]  M. Botvinick,et al.  Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. , 2001, Psychological review.

[10]  Roger Ratcliff,et al.  Application of the diffusion model to two-choice tasks for adults 75-90 years old. , 2007, Psychology and aging.

[11]  D. Stuss,et al.  Age-related differences in processing irrelevant information: Evidence from event-related potentials , 2009, Neuropsychologia.

[12]  J. Polich,et al.  P300 in the evaluation of aging and dementia. , 1991, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology. Supplement.

[13]  Denis Brunet,et al.  Topographic ERP Analyses: A Step-by-Step Tutorial Review , 2008, Brain Topography.

[14]  C. Carter,et al.  The anterior cingulate as a conflict monitor: fMRI and ERP studies , 2002, Physiology & Behavior.

[15]  Geert J. M. van Boxtel,et al.  The N2 in go/no-go tasks reflects conflict monitoring not response inhibition , 2004, Brain and Cognition.

[16]  J. Kenemans,et al.  Electrophysiological correlates of attention, inhibition, sensitivity and bias in a continuous performance task , 2004, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[17]  R. C. Oldfield.  THE ASSESSMENT AND ANALYSIS OF HANDEDNESS , 1971 .

[18]  Denise C. Park,et al.  The adaptive brain: aging and neurocognitive scaffolding. , 2009, Annual review of psychology.

[19]  A Pfefferbaum,et al.  ERPs to stimuli requiring response production and inhibition: effects of age, probability and visual noise. , 1988, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[20]  J. Ford,et al.  ERPs to response production and inhibition. , 1985, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[21]  S. Langenecker,et al.  Differences in the functional neuroanatomy of inhibitory control across the adult life span. , 2002, Psychology and aging.

[22]  N. Cohen,et al.  General and task-specific frontal lobe recruitment in older adults during executive processes: A fMRI investigation of task-switching , 2001, Neuroreport.

[23]  H. Bokura,et al.  Frontal lobe contribution to response inhibition process—an ERP study and aging effect , 2002 .

[24]  S A Hillyard,et al.  Effects of aging on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a visual detection task. , 1994, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[25]  Andrew Heathcote,et al.  Sequence effects support the conflict theory of N2 and P3 in the Go/NoGo task. , 2010, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[26]  Christo Pantev,et al.  Conflict and inhibition differentially affect the N200/P300 complex in a combined go/nogo and stop-signal task , 2010, NeuroImage.

[27]  E Donchin,et al.  P300 and stimulus categorization: two plus one is not so different from one plus one. , 1980, Psychophysiology.

[28]  G. Dirnberger,et al.  Differential effects of age and executive functions on the resolution of the contingent negative variation: a reexamination of the frontal aging theory , 2010, AGE.

[29]  Phillip J. Holcomb,et al.  Does compensatory neural activity survive old-old age? , 2011, NeuroImage.

[30]  Antonino Vallesi,et al.  Excessive sub-threshold motor preparation for non-target stimuli in normal aging , 2010, NeuroImage.

[31]  Piotr Jaskowski,et al.  Evidence for an Integrative Role of P3b in Linking Reaction to Perception , 2005 .

[32]  D. E. Astle,et al.  Dissociating neural indices of dynamic cognitive control in advance task-set preparation: An ERP study of task switching , 2006, Brain Research.

[33]  R. Barry,et al.  Movement-related potentials in the Go/NoGo task: The P3 reflects both cognitive and motor inhibition , 2008, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[34]  M. Grealy,et al.  Aging and inhibitory errors on a motor shift of set task , 2006, Experimental Brain Research.

[35]  Elliot A. Stein,et al.  Event-Related fMRI of Inhibitory Control Reveals Lateralized Prefrontal Activation Differences between Healthy Young and Older Adults , 2001 .

[36]  Robert J. Barry,et al.  Response priming in the Go/NoGo task: The N2 reflects neither inhibition nor conflict , 2007, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[37]  K. R. Ridderinkhof,et al.  Electrophysiological correlates of anterior cingulate function in a go/no-go task: Effects of response conflict and trial type frequency , 2003, Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience.

[38]  H. Bokura,et al.  Electrophysiological correlates for response inhibition in a Go/NoGo task , 2001, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[39]  Allen Azizian,et al.  Beware misleading cues: perceptual similarity modulates the N2/P3 complex. , 2006, Psychophysiology.

[40]  M. Bellgrove,et al.  Insights into the neural basis of response inhibition from cognitive and clinical neuroscience , 2009, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[41]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  Stimulus modality, perceptual overlap, and the go/no-go N2. , 2004, Psychophysiology.

[42]  R. Barry,et al.  The development of stop-signal and Go/Nogo response inhibition in children aged 7-12 years: performance and event-related potential indices. , 2007, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[43]  Lun Zhao,et al.  Electrophysiological activity underlying inhibitory control processes in late-life depression: A Go/Nogo study , 2007, Neuroscience Letters.

[44]  E Donchin,et al.  A new method for off-line removal of ocular artifact. , 1983, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[45]  A. A. Wijers,et al.  Inhibition, response mode, and stimulus probability: a comparative event-related potential study , 2002, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[46]  Anders M. Fjell,et al.  P300 and Neuropsychological Tests as Measures of Aging: Scalp Topography and Cognitive Changes , 2004, Brain Topography.

[47]  T. Robbins,et al.  Inhibition and the right inferior frontal cortex , 2004, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[48]  T W Picton,et al.  The effects of age on human event-related potentials. , 1984, Psychophysiology.

[49]  J. Polich.  Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b , 2007, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[50]  M. Falkenstein,et al.  Age related strategic differences in processing irrelevant information , 2011, Neuroscience Letters.

[51]  Donatella Spinelli,et al.  Neural correlates of attentional and executive processing in middle-age fencers. , 2012, Medicine and science in sports and exercise.

[52]  Lynn Hasher,et al.  Working Memory, Comprehension, and Aging: A Review and a New View , 1988 .

[53]  D. Guthrie,et al.  Significance testing of difference potentials. , 1991, Psychophysiology.

[54]  P. Reuter-Lorenz,et al.  Neurocognitive Aging and the Compensation Hypothesis , 2008 .

[55]  E. Jodo,et al.  Relation of a negative ERP component to response inhibition in a Go/No-go task. , 1992, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[56]  Michael Falkenstein,et al.  Inhibition-Related ERP Components: Variation with Modality, Age, and Time-on-Task , 2002 .

[57]  Antonino Vallesi,et al.  Targets and non-targets in the aging brain: A go/nogo event-related potential study , 2011, Neuroscience Letters.

[58]  H. Tachibana,et al.  Age-related changes in event-related potentials in visual discrimination tasks. , 1996, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[59]  E. Donchin,et al.  On the dependence of P300 latency on stimulus evaluation processes. , 1984, Psychophysiology.

[60]  D. Pizzagalli,et al.  When ‘go’ and ‘nogo’ are equally frequent: ERP components and cortical tomography , 2004, The European journal of neuroscience.

[61]  Janette L. Smith,et al.  Conflict and inhibition in the cued-Go/NoGo task , 2011, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[62]  M. Hughes,et al.  The spatial and temporal dynamics of anticipatory preparation and response inhibition in task-switching , 2010, NeuroImage.

[63]  P. Reuter-Lorenz.  New visions of the aging mind and brain , 2002, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[64]  C. Lustig,et al.  Inhibitory Mechanisms and the Control of Attention , 2007 .

[65]  Jonathan R. Folstein,et al.  Influence of cognitive control and mismatch on the N2 component of the ERP: a review. , 2007, Psychophysiology.

[66]  T. Salthouse.  The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. , 1996, Psychological review.

[67]  Donatella Spinelli,et al.  Prefrontal hyperactivity in older people during motor planning , 2012, NeuroImage.