Differential age-related decline in conflict-driven task-set shielding from emotional versus non-emotional distracters.
While normal aging is associated with a marked decline in cognitive abilities, such as memory and executive functions, recent evidence suggests that control processes involved in regulating responses to emotional stimuli may remain well-preserved in the elderly. However, neither the precise nature of these preserved control processes, nor their domain-specificity with respect to comparable non-emotional control processes, are currently well-established. Here, we tested the hypothesis of domain-specific preservation of emotional control in the elderly by employing two closely matched behavioral tasks that assessed the ability to shield the processing of task-relevant stimulus information from competition by task-irrelevant distracter stimuli that could be either non-emotional or emotional in nature. The efficacy of non-emotional versus emotional task-set shielding, gauged via the 'conflict adaptation effect', was compared between cohorts of healthy young adults, healthy elderly adults, and individuals diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease (PRAD), age-matched to the elderly subjects. It was found that, compared to the young adult cohort, the healthy elderly displayed deficits in task-set shielding in the non-emotional but not in the emotional task, whereas PRAD subjects displayed impaired performance in both tasks. These results provide new evidence that healthy aging is associated with a domain-specific preservation of emotional control functions, specifically, the shielding of a current task-set from interference by emotional distracter stimuli. This selective preservation of function supports the notion of partly dissociable affective control mechanisms, and may either reflect different time-courses of degeneration in the neuroanatomical circuits mediating task-set maintenance in the face of non-emotional versus emotional distracters, or a motivational shift towards affective processing in the elderly.
Monti
Jim M
JM
Cognitive Neurology & Alzheimer's Disease Center, Northwestern University, USA.
Weintraub
Sandra
S
Egner
Tobias
T
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000150:complications*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult