Cortex
Volume 46, Issue 4 , Pages 522-534, April 2010

Ageing affects brain activity in highly educated older adults: An ERP study using a word-stem priming task

  • Alexandra Osorio

      Affiliations

    • LENA CNRS UPR-640 UPMC – Hôpital de la Salpètriere, Paris, France
    • Department of Basic Psychology II, UNED, Madrid, Spain
    • ,
  • Séverine Fay

      Affiliations

    • UMR-CNRS 6234 CeRCA, Université François Rabelais, Tours, France
    • ,
  • Viviane Pouthas

      Affiliations

    • LENA CNRS UPR-640 UPMC – Hôpital de la Salpètriere, Paris, France
    • ,
  • Soledad Ballesteros

      Affiliations

    • Department of Basic Psychology II, UNED, Madrid, Spain
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Department of Basic Psychology II, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Juan del Rosal, 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain.

Received 12 December 2008; received in revised form 6 May 2009 and 6 June 2009; accepted 31 August 2009. published online 08 October 2009.

Abstract 

In this event-related evoked potentials (ERP) study, the neural correlates of a group of highly educated older adults were compared with those of a group of young adults while performing a word-stem completion priming task under semantic and lexical encoding conditions. The results revealed that both age groups exhibited robust priming. The older participants showed better performance than the young adults. Both groups exhibited ERP repetition effects at posterior sites, but only the older adults showed additional frontal activity. The results suggest that highly performing older adults compensate for their lower level of parieto-occipital functioning, reflected by smaller P300 amplitude at posterior sites, by recruiting frontal sites as a mode of brain adaptation.

Keywords: Ageing, Awareness, Event-related potential (ERP), Repetition priming, Word-stem priming

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PII: S0010-9452(09)00265-2

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2009.09.003

Cortex
Volume 46, Issue 4 , Pages 522-534, April 2010

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