Galindo GAM, Amador RFJ, Jiménez LG

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 34-39
PDF size: 263.03 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Cognitive slowing is a ubiquitous sign in many altered nervous system conditions and also a hallmark of the cognitive decline that accompanies aging. This psychomotor slowing involves hazards that could be fatal. The indicator that is usually used to evaluate cognitive slowing is the reaction time. Objective: Identify similarities and differences between the patterns of temporal change of the reaction time and those derived from other levels of functional organization of the nervous system: P300, in a group of working elderly people and a group of young controls. Material and method: 53 healthy elder adults and 55 comparable young controls were evaluated while performing three discriminative reaction time tasks of increasing cognitive difficulty. The reaction time, errors, latency and amplitude of the P300 component were contrasted by ANOVAs. Results: Older adults were slower; the comparison of the reaction times revealed a multiplicative effect (F2,186 =11; p<0,0001). They also made more errors (F2,105=94; p<0,0001) and showed amplitudes consistently lower than the controls (F1,106 =19; p<0,0001). A greater frontal activation that was accentuated with the increase of difficulty was observed. Conclusions: These results support the hypothesis that the cognitive slowing that characterizes the elderly is related to a deficit of processing and maintenance of the attention set, necessary for the execution of tasks where the discrimination between stimuli and the Selection of answers is decisive.