PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Behavioral and brain-related changes in word production have been claimed to predominantly occur after 70 years of age. Most studies investigating age-related changes in adulthood only compared young to older adults, failing to determine whether neural processes underlying word production change at an earlier age than observed in behavior. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating whether changes in neurophysiological processes underlying word production are aligned with behavioral changes. Behavior and the electrophysiological event-related potential patterns of word production were assessed during a picture naming task in 95 participants across five adult lifespan age groups (ranging from 16 to 80 years old). While behavioral performance decreased starting from 70 years of age, significant neurophysiological changes were present at the age of 40 years old, in a time window (between 150 and 220 ms) likely associated with lexical-semantic processes underlying referential word production. These results show that neurophysiological modifications precede the behavioral changes in language production; they can be interpreted in line with the suggestion that the lexical-semantic reorganization in mid-adulthood influences the maintenance of language skills longer than for other cognitive functions.
摘要：
据称，行为和大脑相关的单词产生变化主要发生在70岁以后。大多数调查成年期年龄相关变化的研究仅比较年轻人和老年人，无法确定单词产生的潜在神经过程是否比行为中观察到的更早发生了变化。这项研究旨在通过调查单词产生背后的神经生理过程的变化是否与行为变化相一致来填补这一空白。在五个成人寿命年龄组（16至80岁）的95名参与者的图片命名任务中，评估了行为和与电生理事件相关的单词产生的潜在模式。虽然行为表现从70岁开始下降，在40岁时出现了显著的神经生理变化，在时间窗口（150到220毫秒之间）中，可能与引用单词产生的基础词汇语义过程相关。这些结果表明，神经生理学的修改先于语言产生的行为变化；可以根据以下建议来解释它们：成年中期的词汇语义重组比其他认知功能对语言技能的维持影响更长。
