Gaál Zsófia Anna, Bodnár Flóra, Czigler István
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest, Hungary.
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of SciencesBudapest, Hungary; Doctoral School of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapest, Hungary; Institue of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapest, Hungary.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2017 Jan 31;9:15. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2017.00015. eCollection 2017.
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.
我们研究了在自动和与任务相关水平上视觉整合的年龄相关差异的可能性。在我们的实验中，分析了15名年轻女性（21.9±1.8岁）和15名年长女性（66.6±3.5岁）的数据。在被动oddball范式中研究自动加工，并测量事件相关脑电位的视觉失配负波（vMMN）。字母和伪字母要么作为单个字符呈现，要么字符依次以两个片段呈现。在两个片段同时呈现（完整字符）的情况下，两个年龄组均出现vMMN。然而，在相继呈现时，只有异常伪字母会引发vMMN，且仅在年长组中。该组中最长的刺激起始异步（SOA）为50毫秒，表明老年人的信息持续时间更长。在一项心理物理学实验中，任务是指出字符对中的哪一个是合法字母。同样，字母和伪字母以片段形式呈现。我们在30毫秒（刺激间隔为0毫秒）时获得了成功整合，但在两个年龄组中更长的SOA时未获得成功整合，这表明在与任务相关的刺激水平下，未检测到与年龄相关的表现差异。我们将结果解释为老年人局部抑制回路的效率受损，导致刺激持续时间更长，因此在这种特定情况下视觉感知更好。
