Event-related potentials elicited by face identity processing in elderly adults with cognitive impairment.

UNLABELLED

BackGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Patients with mild Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment show selective loss of knowledge regarding facial identification.

METHODS

The authors focus on decline effects on event-related potentials (ERPs) P100, N170, N250, and N400, associated with the processing of facial identity. Different famous and unknown faces were presented in explicit and implicit familiarity tasks.

RESULTS

Patients with cognitive impairment showed modulations on P100 and N170 and greater activity in prefrontal areas in the earlier component. In healthy elderly individuals, but not in patients, famous faces modulated the long-latency ERPs N250 and N400, related to the access and retrieval of stored facial-related information, respectively.

CONCLUSION

ERPs have potential as markers of neurodegenerative disease such as dementia. The neural systems supporting facial identification may differ in normal and cognitively impaired older adults.