An Event-Related Potential Investigation of the Effects of Age on Alerting, Orienting, and Executive Function

Kaufman, David A.; Sozda, Christopher N.; Dotson, Vonetta M.; Perlstein, William M. · 2016 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2016.00099

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Summary

This study investigated how aging affects the neural and behavioral correlates of three distinct attentional networks: alerting, orienting, and executive control. While previous behavioral research suggested age-related declines in these networks, findings were often mixed and potentially confounded by generalized cognitive slowing in older adults. The authors aimed to determine whether specific neural deficits exist beyond general slowing by combining behavioral data with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. The researchers recruited 19 young adults (mean age 22.9) and 16 older adults (mean age 64.8) who were neurologically healthy. Participants completed the Attention Network Test (ANT), a computerized task that manipulates cue types (no-cue, center-cue, double-cue, spatial-cue) and flanker compatibility (congruent, incongruent, neutral) to isolate alerting, orienting, and executive control effects. Behavioral data included reaction times (RTs) and error rates. Simultaneously, 64-channel EEG data were recorded to analyze ERP components associated with each network: the posterior N1 for alerting and orienting, and the parietal P300 for executive control. Statistical analyses included ANOVAs for behavioral and ERP data, with RTs also normalized via z-score transformations to control for generalized slowing. Behavioral results showed that older adults exhibited significantly slower RTs across all three networks compared to young adults. However, after controlling for generalized slowing, significant group differences remained only for the alerting network; older adults showed a reduced alerting effect, indicating they did not benefit as much from alerting cues. In contrast, orienting and executive control effects did not differ significantly between groups once slowing was accounted for. ERP analysis revealed that alerting cues enhanced posterior N1 responses in young adults, but this enhancement was weakened in older adults. This neural deficit in alerting was correlated with poorer performance on neuropsychological tests of attention. Orienting and executive control ERP components showed largely similar patterns between groups. The study concludes that aging specifically impairs the alerting attentional network, both behaviorally and neurally, while orienting and executive control networks remain relatively intact or are compensated for. The weakened N1 response suggests older adults fail to fully utilize alerting cues to facilitate subsequent target processing, which may compromise their responsiveness and flexibility. These findings clarify that age-related attentional deficits are not uniform across all networks and highlight the utility of ERPs in distinguishing specific neural impairments from general cognitive slowing.

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• cognitive aging