Aging and Neurological Disorders : Aging and Dementia Evaluated by Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)(Aging and age-related diseases)

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are evoked during information-processing in the brain. The ERP components are thought to represent cognition, anticipation, judgment, etc, and are called 'endogenous potentials'. Each ERP component appears as continuously changing brain potentials, enabling us to investigate the time course of information-processing in real time and the time order of each stage in the total absence of overt behavior. Recently, to investigate which stages of information-processing are affected in normal aging and dementia, various ERP components including nogo as well as go P300 (P3) and also early negative components, e.g., N200 (N2, N2b), mismatch negativity, and NA have been utilized. The aim of this paper is to introduce ERP studies of the age- and dementia-related deficits in information processing in the brain