Niessen Eva, Fink Gereon R, Hoffmann Heide E M, Weiss Peter H, Stahl Jutta
Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-3), Research Centre Jülich, Germany.
Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-3), Research Centre Jülich, Germany; Department of Neurology, University Hospital Cologne, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2017 May 15;152:517-529. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.03.015. Epub 2017 Mar 8.
With increasing age, cognitive control processes steadily decline. Prior research suggests that healthy older adults have a generally intact performance monitoring system, but show specific deficits in error awareness, i.e., the ability to detect committed errors. We examined the neural processing of errors across the adult lifespan (69 participants; age range 20-72 years) by analysing the error (-related) negativity (Ne/ERN) and the error positivity (Pe) using an adapted version of the Go/Nogo task. At a stable overall error rate, higher age was associated with a greater proportion of undetected errors. While the Ne/ERN was associated with the processing of errors in general, the Pe amplitude was modulated by detected errors only. Furthermore, the Pe amplitude for detected errors was significantly smaller in older adults, in contrast to the Ne/ERN amplitude which did not show age-related changes. Structural path models suggested that through those age-related changes in Pe amplitude, an indirect effect on the performance was observed. Our results confirm and extend previous extreme-group based findings about specific deficits in error detection associated with higher age using age as a continuous predictor. Age-related reductions in Pe amplitude, associated with more undetected errors, are independent of early error processing, as evidenced by the preserved Ne/ERN.
随着年龄的增长，认知控制过程会逐渐衰退。先前的研究表明，健康的老年人通常拥有完整的绩效监测系统，但在错误意识方面存在特定缺陷，即检测已犯错误的能力。我们通过使用Go/Nogo任务的改编版本，分析错误（相关）负波（Ne/ERN）和错误正波（Pe），研究了整个成年期（69名参与者；年龄范围20 - 72岁）错误的神经处理过程。在总体错误率稳定的情况下，年龄越大，未被检测到的错误比例越高。虽然Ne/ERN一般与错误处理相关，但Pe波幅仅受检测到的错误调制。此外，与Ne/ERN波幅未显示出与年龄相关的变化相反，老年人中检测到的错误的Pe波幅明显较小。结构路径模型表明，通过Pe波幅中与年龄相关的这些变化，观察到了对绩效的间接影响。我们的结果证实并扩展了先前基于极端组的研究发现，即使用年龄作为连续预测变量时，与较高年龄相关的错误检测存在特定缺陷。与更多未被检测到的错误相关的Pe波幅随年龄的降低与早期错误处理无关，Ne/ERN的保留证明了这一点。
