Age and novelty: Event‐related brain potentials and autonomic activity

Abstract

Our aim was to study age-related differences in the habituation of orienting reaction by using novel visual stimuli. We intended to fill a gap in habituation research by recording both autonomic and ERP components of orienting to visual stimuli in the same sample and in highly related paradigms. We report data showing that in young subjects repetition of visual novels yielded fast habituation of both skin conductance responses and ERP components (P3(novel), N2b) whereas elderly people displayed no sign of habituation. However, cardiac deceleration--thought conventionally to be part of the orienting reaction--did not habituate in either group. Overall, most of our results harmonize with those obtained by using auditory stimuli; therefore we conclude that there is no significant modality specificity in age-related deterioration of habituation processes.

Effects of aging on habituation to novelty: An ERP study

“…Cycowicz and Friedman, 1997;Cycowicz et al, 1996), evidenced by reduction in novelty P3 amplitude at fronto-central locations with increasing time spent on task, and suggests a process of rapid familiarisation (learning) of novel stimuli. Interestingly, this pattern of activity has not been found in older adults (Friedman et al, 1993Friedman and Simpson, 1994;Weisz and Czigler, 2006). The lack of habituation of the novelty P3 in older adults has been interpreted as an inability to construct a "novel category template" (Friedman and Simpson, 1994, p. 62), with older adults treating repeated novel stimuli as new (Fabiani and Friedman, 1995;Friedman and Simpson, 1994).…”

“…Czigler et al, 2006;Riis et al, 2008;Weisz and Czigler, 2006). More recent studies have found that novelty P3 amplitude was actually increased in high-functioning older adults compared to average-functioning older adults: a finding that was explained by compensatory recruitment of other neural networks involving the frontal lobes (Daffner et al, 2006;Riis et al, 2008).…”

“…Novelty P3 amplitude is typically reduced (Fabiani and Friedman, 1995;Friedman et al, 1993Friedman et al, , 1998Friedman and Simpson, 1994), and novelty P3 latency increased Fabiani and Friedman, 1995;Friedman et al, 1993;Weisz and Czigler, 2006) in older compared to younger age groups. In both younger and older adults, the novelty P3 has an increased anterior distribution compared to the parietally distributed P3 elicited by target stimuli.…”

Effects of Novelty on Event-Related Potentials: Aging and Stimulus Replacement

“…Previous results indicated that the processing of task-unrelated (novel) stimuli was compromised in older participants, who were less responsive to task-irrelevant and/or novel stimuli, and habituation to such stimuli was slower in this age group [8,[22][23][24] . Fjell and Walhovd [25] observed a decrease in the amplitude of P3a in older adults.…”

“…As Folstein and Van Petten [6] point out, N2b emerges whenever (1) a stimulus requires attentive processing and the stimulus does not match an activated memory trace or (2) cognitive control is needed to resolve conflicting stimulus-response tendencies. The former aspect may contribute to the orienting reaction [7,8] . However, N2b can emerge in the absence of all components of the orienting response (e.g.…”