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Is emotion processing affected by advancing age? An event-related brain potential study.

Matthias J Wieser1, Andreas Mühlberger, Ramona Kenntner-Mabiala

  • 1Department of Psychology, Biological Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Wuerzburg, Germany. wieser@psychologie.uni-wuerburg.de

Brain Research
|June 6, 2006
PubMed
Summary

Advancing age may delay early visual emotion discrimination, as shown by event-related brain potentials (ERPs). This age-related delay in processing emotional stimuli does not appear to affect later evaluative processing.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Gerontology

Background:

  • Emotion recognition is impacted by aging, evidenced by subjective reports and performance on recognition tasks.
  • Distinguishing between perceptual and executive function in age-related emotional processing is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate age-related differences in the discrimination of emotions using event-related brain potentials (ERPs).
  • To clarify the impact of aging on early visual emotion discrimination and its subsequent processing.

Main Methods:

  • Compared ERPs in elderly (59-74 years) and younger adults (30-40 years) during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of emotional images.
  • Analyzed the early posterior negativity (EPN) component as an index of early emotion discrimination.

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  • Collected affective ratings (valence, arousal) for visual stimuli.

    • Main Results:

    • Both age groups exhibited an EPN for high-arousal emotional pictures.
    • Elderly participants showed a slight delay in their EPN response.
    • Affective modulation of the EPN was reduced in older adults during an early time window, but not a later one.
    • No significant differences in valence or arousal ratings were found between groups.

    Conclusions:

    • An age-related delay in early visual emotion discrimination exists.
    • This delay in initial processing does not seem to impair subsequent evaluative processing of emotional stimuli.