engleski

Executive functions and neural electrophysiological changes during young adulthood

Important changes take place after adolescent years, such as achieving legal adulthood, completing education, finding a full-time job and reaching financial independence. Cognitive challenges during this time are generally high and consist of different circumstances that require particular skills, such as organizing, planning, problem-solving and multi-tasking, often summarized under the heading - executive functions. These skills are essential for success in school and work situations, as well as everyday living. The aim of this study was to investigate timing, order of activation and brain dynamic changes during young adulthood (age 19 – 44 years), using event-related (ERP) brain activity and different forms of executive functioning. Late adolescents (aged 19 – 21 years), young adults (aged 23 – 27 years) and mid adults (aged 28 – 44 years) performed the go/no-go task designed to measure response inhibition, a modified four-color Stroop task designed to measure interference control, and a categorization task designed to induce perceptual (orthographic) and semantic word processing. Additionally, we explored how different processing demands influence incidental recall. Age differences were found in both performance measures and ERP components of executive functions. Our findings point to the continuation of age-related differences in brain maturational processes underling response inhibition, interference control and word processing after adolescence well into adulthood.

executive functions; protracted brain development; young adulthood; event-related potentials

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