In healthy language ageing, a fundamental asymmetry has been observed between language comprehension – usually well maintained – and language production, which does present age-related declines (e.g. Thornton & Light, 2006). The aim of this doctoral thesis is to investigate the nature of language production modifications in the healthy elderly speaker, by focusing on the cognitive mechanisms underpinning the main characteristic observed in older speakers, namely the increasing word finding difficulties. Behavioral and neurophysiological measures have been associated to pursue this objective. Functional brain imaging techniques, as topographic ERP analysis, allow high temporal resolution and provide important information on the time course of information processing during the performance of theoretically relevant tasks. These advantages have been exploited to interpret data in the framework of what, at present, represents the most articulated theoretical model trying to account for word finding problems in elderly speakers, namely the Transmission Deficit Model (MacKay & Burke, 1990).