Aging and attentional set shifting on WCST: An event-related EEG study

As the brain ages, it suffers several neurochemical, structural and functional changes. These deficits are primarily reflected on daily memory tasks. In the present work, we use the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) task to assess P300 component of the event-related potential (ERP) as a marker for aging. Considering age-related effects, WCST was applied to young, middle-aged and elder participants. Early-late trial analysis tested the attentional set shifting and working memory updating hypothesis for the mechanisms behind WCST. The results suggest that, as people age, P3b peak latency highly correlates with age on both early and late trials, increasing as people gets older. P3b peak amplitude significantly distinguished between early and late trials regardless the subjects´ age, while there were no differences on P300 peak latency.