Effects of old age and resource demand on double-step adaptation of saccadic eye movements

It is still unknown whether adaptation of saccades--like that of arm movements-deteriorates in the presence of a concurrent resource--demanding task, and whether it is affected by old age. We therefore compared double-step adaptation of saccade directions in young and older persons exposed to the adaptation task only (groups CY & CO), to the adaptation task and a spatially adjacent manual tracking task (AY & AO) or to the adaptation task and a spatially distant manual tracking task (DY & DO). Adaptation was similar in all groups except DO: the latter group showed no consistent adaptation and no adequate aftereffects. Tracking improved little by practice in all groups except AY, where the improvement was substantial. Our data therefore provide no evidence for an impact of old age and resource demand on saccadic adaptation, possibly because the neural substrate partly differs from that for arm adaptation. The lack of adaptation in DO probably reflects the well-known shrinkage of the functional field of view in old age.