Aging effects on auditory processing: an event-related potential study

Deviant tones randomly embedded in a sequence of standard tones elicit an event-related potential (ERP) called the mismatch negativity (MMN), which reflects automatic stimulus-change detection in the human auditory system. When the tones are attended, deviant tones elicit also an N2b component that partly overlaps the MMN. Sequences of standard and deviant (probability 0.15) tones were presented to 13 healthy younger and 13 older subjects. Deviant stimuli were, in separate blocks, either occasional shorter duration or higher frequency tones. The interstimulus interval (ISI) was, in separate blocks, either 0.5 s or 1.5 s, and in the frequency-change condition also 4.5 s. Aging affected neither frequency nor duration of MMN with the 0.5 s ISI. This finding indicates that automatic stimulus discrimination per se is not impaired with normal aging. However, with a 4.5-s ISI the MMN/N2b-complex attenuated significantly more in the older than younger subjects. This suggests that the stimulus trace decays faster or that involuntary attention switching is less sensitive with aging.