Abstract
Aghamolaei, M., Jafari, Z., Grimm, S., Zarnowiec, K., Najafi-Koopaie, M., & Escera, C. (2018). The effects of aging on early stages of the auditory deviance detection system. Clinical Neurophysiology, 129(11), 2252-2258.
The effects of aging on early stages of the auditory deviance detection system
Objective: The aging effects on auditory change detection have been studied using the MismatchNegativity (MMN) potential. However, recent studies have found earlier correlates of deviance detectionat the level of the middle-latency response (MLR) and the effects of aging on this deviant-relatedresponse have not yet been clarified. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of aging onboth levels of the auditory deviance detection system.Methods: MMN and MLR responses were recorded in 33 young and 29 older adults from 32 scalp elec-trodes during frequency oddball and swapped-oddball conditions.Results: In the young group, modulation of MLR and a clear MMN response were observed, whereas in theaged group, no evidence of deviance detection was found at the level of MLR and the MMN amplitude wassignificantly diminished.Conclusions: Based on the obtained results, aging affects both levels of the auditory deviance detectionsystem which seems to be a result of deficits in regularity encoding along the auditory hierarchy.Significance: The current findings suggest that age-related physiological changes result in deficits in reg-ularity encoding, starting from early stages of processing. This might eventually affect stream segregationand induce difficulties in understanding speech in complex environments.
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Cognitive and Biological Psychology
University of Leipzig
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