Szymaszek Aneta, Sereda Magdalena, Pöppel Ernst, Szelag Elzbieta
Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw, Poland.
Cogn Neuropsychol. 2009 Mar;26(2):135-47. doi: 10.1080/02643290802504742. Epub 2008 Oct 31.
Temporal-order judgements in the time range of some milliseconds were assessed by using two auditory tasks in 86 participants, aged from 20 to 69 years. Two stimulus presentation modes, binaural versus monaural, were compared. Elderly participants performed worse than the younger participants; however, different patterns of age-related declines were observed, depending on the presentation mode. In the monaural mode considerable deterioration was observed beyond 60 years of age, whereas in the binaural mode declines were found much earlier, from 40 years of age. Performance of the monaural task correlated with cognitive competences and provided important insight into neuronal timing mechanisms. In contrast, the binaural mode reflected a bias towards an integrated perception of sequential stimuli and was less related to cognitive resources. These findings provide evidence that age-related declines in human sequencing abilities involve, besides temporal mechanisms, also a mode-specific processing, presumably associated with different neuronal mechanisms.
