Age-related differences in task goal processing strategies during action cascading.

We are often faced with situations requiring the execution of a coordinated cascade of different actions to achieve a goal, but we can apply different strategies to do so. Until now, these different action cascading strategies have, however, not been examined with respect to possible effects of aging. We tackled this question in a systems neurophysiological study using EEG and source localization in healthy older adults and employing mathematical constraints to determine the strategy applied. The results suggest that older adults seem to apply a less efficient strategy when cascading different actions. Compared to younger adults, older adults seem to struggle to hierarchically organize their actions, which leads to an inefficient and more parallel processing of different task goals. On a systems level, the observed deficit is most likely due to an altered processing of task goals at the response selection level (P3 ERP) and related to changes of neural processes in the temporo-parietal junction.