Reduced suppression or labile memory? Mechanisms of inefficient filtering of irrelevant information in older adults.

Cognitive aging theories emphasize the decrease in efficiency of inhibitory processes and attention control in normal aging, which, in turn, may result in reduction of working memory function. Accordingly, some of these age-related changes may be due to faster sensory memory decay or to inefficient filtering of irrelevant sensory information (sensory gating). Here, event-related brain potentials and the event-related optical signal were recorded in younger and older adults passively listening to tone trains. To determine whether age differentially affects decay of sensory memory templates over short intervals, trains were separated by delays of either 1 or 5 sec. To determine whether age affects the suppression of responses to unattended repeated stimuli, we evaluated the brain activity elicited by successive train stimuli. Some trains started with a shorter-duration stimulus (deviant trains). Results showed that both electrical and optical responses to tones were more persistent with repeated stimulation in older adults than in younger adults, whereas the effects of delay were similar in the two groups. A mismatch negativity (MMN) was elicited by the first stimulus in deviant trains. This MMN was larger for 1- than 5-sec delay, but did not differ across groups. These data suggest that age-related changes in sensory processing are likely due to inefficient filtering of repeated information, rather than to faster sensory memory decay. This inefficient filtering may be due to, or interact with, reduced attention control. Furthermore, it may increase the noise levels in the information processing system and thus contribute to problems with working memory and speed of processing.

5 Hz repetitive TMS increases anticipatory motor activity in the human cortex.

In the present study, we analyzed how high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the primary motor hand area (M1-Hand) shapes anticipatory motor activity in frontal areas as indexed by the contingent negative variation (CNV). Eight right-handed volunteers received real or sham 5Hz rTMS at an intensity of 90% resting motor threshold (1,500 stimuli per session). Real but not sham rTMS to left M1-Hand induced a site-specific increase in amplitude of the late component of the CNV at the electrode C3 overlaying the site of stimulation. The increase in pre-movement activity in the stimulated cortex may reflect an increase in facilitatory drive from connected motor areas, enhanced responsiveness of the stimulated cortex to these inputs or both.

Magnetic fields evoked by speech sounds in preschool children.

OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to study how well the auditory evoked magnetic fields (EF) reflect the behavioral discrimination of speech sounds in preschool children, and if they reveal the same information as simultaneously recorded evoked potentials (EP). METHODS: EFs and EPs were recorded in 11 preschool children (mean age 6 years 9 months) using an oddball paradigm with two sets of speech stimuli consisting both of one standard and two deviants. After the brain activity recording, children were tested on behavioural discrimination of the same stimuli presented in pairs. RESULTS: There was a mismatch negativity (MMN) calculated from difference curves and its magnetic counterpart MMNm measured from the original responses only to those deviants, which were behaviourally easiest to discriminate from the standards. In addition, EF revealed significant differences between the locations of the activation depending on the hemisphere and stimulus properties. CONCLUSIONS: EF, in addition to reflecting the sound-discrimination accuracy in a similar manner as EP, also reflected the spatial differences in activation of the temporal lobes. SIGNIFICANCE: These results suggest that both EPs and EFs are feasible for investigating the neural basis of sound discrimination in young children. The recording of EFs with its high spatial resolution reveals information on the location of the activated neural sources.

Microwaves emitted by cellular telephones affect human slow brain potentials.

The influence of electromagnetic fields (EMF) emitted by cellular telephones on preparatory slow brain potentials (SP) was studied in two experiments, about 6 months apart. In the first experiment, a significant decrease of SP was found during exposure to EMF in a complex visual monitoring task (VMT). This effect was replicated in the second experiment. In addition to the VMT, EMF effects on SP were analysed in two further, less demanding tasks: in a simple finger movement task to elicit a Bereitschaftspotential (BP) and in a two-stimulus task to elicit a contingent negative variation (CNV). In comparison to the VMT, no significant main EMF effects were found in BP and CNV tasks. The results accounted for a selective EMF effect on particular aspects of human information processing, but did not indicate any influence on human performance, well-being and health.

Los potenciales relacionados con los eventos: CNV y PINV en sujetos normales y disléxicos / Potencials related to events: CNV and PINV in normal and dyslexic subjects

La variación contingente negativa (CNV) es una onda cerebral que ha sido asociada con los procesos de expectancia, atención, anticipación y preparación de una respuesta. La duración o resolución de esta onda es conocida como la variación negativa postimperativa (PINV). En la presente investigación se estudiaron las características dela onda PINV en una población de niños con rendimiento escolar adecuado y niños con transtornos en el proceso de lectura. Con base en el rendimiento, en una batería psicoeducativa previamente administrada a 120 niños mexicanos, se seleccionaron 9 sujetos con rendimiento escolar adecuado y sin antecedentes patológicos y 9 sujetos cuya ejecución en la batería psicoeducativa se encontraba dos desviaciones estándar por debajo de las normas estandarizadas. Se utilizaron registros monopolares referidos a lóbulos auriculares cortocircuitados. Siguiendo el Sistema 10-20 internacional se colocaron electrodos en F3, Cz, P3 y 01. Debido a los resultados estadísticos, se observó que dos grupos de sujetos eran significativamente diferentes en la amplitud de la onda PINV en la zona parietal izquierda. Se discute la participación que puede tener esta zona en este transtorno y se consideran factores tales como espectancia, atención y procesamiento de la información en las diferentes encontradas