Olfactory event-related potentials in young and elderly adults: Evaluationof tracking task versus eyes open/closed recording

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate olfactory event-related po tentials (OERPs) elicited by amyl acetate from subjects performing a visuom otor tracking task compared with the no-task conditions of eyes open and ey es closed. Task condition did not produce any reliable effects for any ampl itude measure. Task type weakly influenced only PZ latency. Elder adults ev inced smaller P2 and N1/P2 amplitudes and longer N1 and P2 latencies than y oung adults. The results suggest that tracking task performance is not nece ssary to obtain robust OERPs from normal subjects of a wide age range.