Yang, Tao; Di Bernardi Luft, Caroline; Sun, Pei; Bhattacharya, Joydeep and Banissy, Michael J.. 2020. Investigating Age-Related Neural Compensation During Emotion Perception Using Electroencephalography. Brain Sciences, 10(2), 61. ISSN 2076-3425 [Article]

Preview

Text brainsci-10-00061.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract or Description

Previous research suggests declines in emotion perception in older as compared to younger adults, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we address this by investigating how “face-age” and “face emotion intensity” affect both younger and older participants’ behavioural and neural responses using event-related potentials (ERPs). Sixteen young and fifteen older adults viewed and judged the emotion type of facial images with old or young face-age and with high- or low- emotion intensities while EEG was recorded. The ERP results revealed that young and older participants exhibited significant ERP differences in two neural clusters: the left frontal and centromedial regions (100–200 ms stimulus onset) and frontal region (250–900 ms) when perceiving neutral faces. Older participants also exhibited significantly higher ERPs within these two neural clusters during anger and happiness emotion perceptual tasks. However, while this pattern of activity supported neutral emotion processing, it was not sufficient to support the effective processing of facial expressions of anger and happiness as older adults showed reductions in performance when perceiving these emotions. These age-related changes are consistent with theoretical models of age-related changes in neurocognitive abilities and may reflect a general age-related cognitive neural compensation in older adults, rather than a specific emotion-processing neural compensation.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10020061
Additional Information:	The project was supported by an ESRC grant awarded to Michael Joseph Banissy [ES/K00882X/1].
Keywords:	emotion perception, ageing, neural compensation, electroencephalogram
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Dates:	Date Event 21 January 2020 Accepted 23 January 2020 Published
Item ID:	28180
Date Deposited:	11 Feb 2020 09:46
Last Modified:	03 Aug 2021 15:04
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/28180

View statistics for this item...

Edit Record (login required)