Inhibitory control of attention declines more than working memory during normal aging

Changes in frontostriatal systems are believed to reduce the efficiency of executive cognitive functions during normal aging, especially the inhibitor y control of attentional and behavioral responses. To characterize changes during normal aging in sensorimotor, working memory and inhibitory attentio nal systems, we rested 20 healthy elderly subjects (age 65-80) and 28 young adults (age 18-34) using oculomotor paradigms. Visually guided saccades of elderly subjects showed decreased peak velocity and increased reaction tim e, but not reduced accuracy, indicating selective age-related declines in s ensorimotor systems. In an oculomotor working memory task, memory for spati al location information in elderly subjects was as accurate as in young adu lts. In contrast, elderly subjects demonstrated a significantly reduced abi lity to voluntarily inhibit eye movements toward flashed targets on an anti saccade task. These findings indicate changes in frontostriatal systems dur ing normal aging that adversely affect volitional inhibitory processes but spare encoding, and retrieval components of spatial working memory. (C) 200 1 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.