RT Journal Article
T1 An Event Related Potentials Study of the Effects of Age, Load and Maintenance Duration on Working Memory Recognition
A1 Pinal Fernández, Diego
A1 Zurrón Ocio, Montserrat
A1 Díaz Fernández, Fernando
AB Age-related decline in cognitive capacities has been attributed to a generalized slowing of processing speed and a reduction in working memory (WM) capacity. Nevertheless, it is unclear how age affects visuospatial WM recognition and its underlying brain electrical activity. Whether age modulates the effects of memory load or information maintenance duration, which determine the limits of WM, remains also elusive. In this exploratory study, performance in a delayed match to sample task declined with age, particularly in conditions with high memory load. Event related potentials analysis revealed longer N2 and P300 latencies in old than in young adults during WM recognition, which may reflect slowing of stimulus evaluation and classification processes, respectively. Although there were no differences between groups in N2 or P300 amplitudes, the latter was more homogeneously distributed in old than in young adults, which may indicate an age-related increased reliance in frontal vs parietal resources during WM recognition. This was further supported by an age-related reduced posterior cingulate activation and increased superior frontal gyrus activation revealed through standardized low resolution electromagnetic tomography. Memory load and maintenance duration effects on brain activity were similar in both age groups. These behavioral and electrophysiological results add evidence in support of age-related decline in WM recognition theories, with a slowing of processing speed that may be limited to stimulus evaluation and categorization processes -with no effects on perceptual processes- and a posterior to anterior shift in the recruitment of neural resources
PB PLOS
SN 1932-6203
YR 2015
FD 2015-11-16
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/15632
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/15632
LA eng
NO Pinal D, Zurrón M, Díaz F (2015) An Event Related Potentials Study of the Effects of Age, Load and Maintenance Duration on Working Memory Recognition. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0143117. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143117
NO This work was financially supported by the Ministerio de Educación (BES 2008-005929) and Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2010-22224-C03-03), Gobierno de España; and by the Consellería de Economía e Industria (10 PXIB 211070 PR), and Consellería de Educación e Ordenación Universitaria (Ref: GPC 2014/047), Xunta de Galicia. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
DS Minerva
RD 24 abr 2026