Emotion identification and aging: Behavioral and neural age-related changes.

OBJECTIVE

Aging is known to alter the processing of facial expressions of emotion (FEE), however the impact of this alteration is less clear. Additionally, there is little information about the temporal dynamics of the neural processing of facial affect.

METHODS

We examined behavioral and neural age-related changes in the identification of FEE using event-related potentials. Furthermore, we analyze the relationship between behavioral/neural responses and neuropsychological functioning. To this purpose, 30 younger adults, 29 middle-aged adults and 26 older adults identified FEE.

RESULTS

The behavioral results showed a similar performance between groups. The neural results showed no significant differences between groups for the P100 component and an increased N170 amplitude in the older group. Furthermore, a pattern of asymmetric activation was evident in the N170 component. Results also suggest deficits in facial feature decoding abilities, reflected by a reduced N250 amplitude in older adults. Neuropsychological functioning predicts P100 modulation, but does not seem to influence emotion identification ability.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest the existence of a compensatory function that would explain the age-equivalent performance in emotion identification.

SIGNIFICANCE

The study may help future research addressing behavioral and neural processes involved on processing of FEE in neurodegenerative conditions.