Subjective cognitive decline in healthy older adults is associated with altered processing of negative versus positive feedback in a probabilistic learning task.

Older adults who worry about their own cognitive capabilities declining, but who do not show evidence of actual cognitive decline in neuropsychological tests, are at an increased risk of being diagnosed with dementia at a later time. Since neural markers may be more sensitive to early stages of cognitive decline, in the present study we examined whether event-related potential responses of feedback processing, elicited in a probabilistic learning task, differ between healthy older adults recruited from the community, who either did (subjective cognitive decline/SCD-group) or did not report (No-SCD group) worry about their own cognition declining beyond the normal age-related development. In the absence of group differences in learning from emotionally charged feedback in the probabilistic learning task, the amplitude of the feedback-related negativity (FRN) varied with feedback valence differently in the two groups: In the No-SCD group, the FRN was larger for positive than negative feedback, while in the SCD group, FRN amplitude did not differ between positive and negative feedback.

Reliability and stability of oddball P300 amplitude in older adults: The role of stimulus sequence effects.

The P300 may be an individual difference marker of neuro-cognitive function, which due to age-related cognitive decline may be particularly useful in older adults. Recently, we reported effects of the local stimulus sequence in an oddball task (i.e.

On the role of item encoding mechanisms in associative memory in young and older adults: A mass univariate ERP study.

We examined the role of item encoding mechanisms in older adults' disproportionate deficit in memory for associations and individual differences therein. Young and older adults encoded sequentially presented object pairs via interactive imagery while their EEG was recorded. Compared to the young adults, older adults exhibited a reduction in associative, but not in item memory performance.