Attention operates through top-down and bottom-up processes, and a balancebetween these processes is crucial for daily tasks. Imperilling such balancecould explain ageing-associated attentional problems such as exacerbated dis-tractibility. In this study, we aimed to characterize this enhanced distractibilityby investigating the impact of ageing upon event-related components associ-ated with top-down and bottom-up attentional processes. MEG and EEG datawere acquired from 14 older and 14 younger healthy adults while performinga task that conjointly evaluates top-down and bottom-up attention. Event-related components were analysed on sensor and source levels. In comparisonwith the younger group, the older mainly displayed (1) reduced target anticipa-tion processes (reduced CMV), (2) increased early target processing (larger P50but smaller N1) and (3) increased processing of early distracting sounds (largerN1 but reduced P3a), followed by a (4) prolonged reorientation towards themain task (larger RON). Taken together, our results suggest that the enhanceddistractibility in ageing could stem from top-down deficits, in particular fromreduced inhibitory and reorientation processes.