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

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate olfactory event-related potentials (OERPs) elicited by amyl acetate from subjects performing a visuomotor tracking task compared with the no-task conditions of eyes open and eyes closed. Task condition did not produce any reliable effects for any amplitude measure. Task type weakly influenced only P2 latency. Elder adults evinced smaller P2 and N1/P2 amplitudes and longer N1 and P2 latencies than young adults. The results suggest that tracking task performance is not necessary to obtain robust OERPs from normal subjects of a wide age range.