Cognition and aging: a highly selective overview of event-related potential (ERP) data.

An overview of highly selected cognitive aging investigations of deviance detection, episodic memory and working memory reveals two primary themes: (1) when variability in elderly samples has been assessed, it has proven useful in understanding age-related changes in cognition; and (2) there is a frontal lobe contribution to at least some age-related changes in cognition. However, there are too few ERP age-related investigations of individual differences to determine whether the changes in patterns of ERP responding can be deemed "compensatory" or "inefficient." It is suggested that, to the extent possible, future electrophysiological investigations of cognitive aging (as well as other physiological measurement techniques) include individual difference measures that will enable the determination of the implication of a given neural pattern in the genesis of a given, age-related behavioral outcome pattern.