Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, University Fernando Pessoa, Portugal; Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal; Molecular Oncology and Viral Pathology Group, Research Center of IPO Porto (CI-IPOP) & RISE@CI-IPOP (Health Research Network), Portuguese Oncology Institute of Porto (IPO Porto)/Porto Comprehensive Cancer Center (Porto.CCC), Portugal.
Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal.
Cortex. 2023 Apr;161:13-25. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2023.01.007. Epub 2023 Feb 18.
Older adults systematically show an enhanced N170 amplitude during the visualization of facial expressions of emotion. The present study aimed to replicate this finding, further investigating if this effect is specific to facial stimuli, present in other neural correlates of face processing, and modulated by own-age faces. To this purpose, younger (n = 25; M = 28.36), middle-aged (n = 23; M = 48.74), and older adults (n = 25; M = 67.36) performed two face/emotion identification tasks during an EEG recording. The results showed that groups did not differ regarding P100 amplitude, but older adults had increased N170 amplitude for both facial and non-facial stimuli. The event-related potentials analysed were not modulated by an own-age bias, but older faces elicited larger N170 in the Emotion Identification Task for all groups. This increased amplitude may reflect a higher ambiguity of older faces due to age-related changes in their physical features, which may elicit higher neural resources to decode. Regarding P250, older faces elicited decreased amplitudes than younger faces, which may reflect a reduced processing of the emotional content of older faces. This interpretation is consistent with the lower accuracy obtained for this category of stimuli across groups. These results have important social implications and suggest that aging may hamper the neural processing of facial expressions of emotion, especially for own-age peers.
老年人在观看面部表情时会系统地表现出增强的 N170 振幅。本研究旨在复制这一发现，进一步研究这种效应是否特定于面部刺激，是否存在于面部处理的其他神经相关物中，以及是否受同龄面孔的调节。为此，年轻组（n=25；M=28.36）、中年组（n=23；M=48.74）和老年组（n=25；M=67.36）在进行脑电图记录时执行了两项面部/情绪识别任务。结果表明，各组 P100 振幅无差异，但老年人对面部和非面部刺激的 N170 振幅均增加。分析的事件相关电位不受同龄偏差的调节，但在所有组中，在情绪识别任务中，老年面孔会引起更大的 N170。这种增加的振幅可能反映了由于年龄相关的生理特征变化，老年面孔的模糊性更高，这可能需要更高的神经资源来解码。关于 P250，老年面孔比年轻面孔引起的振幅减小，这可能反映了对老年面孔的情绪内容的处理减少。这种解释与各组对这一类刺激的较低准确性一致。这些结果具有重要的社会意义，表明衰老可能会阻碍对情绪面部表情的神经处理，尤其是对同龄人的。
