Altered Error Processing following Vascular Thalamic Damage: Evidence from an Antisaccade Task

Abstract

Event-related potentials (ERP) research has identified a negative deflection within about 100 to 150 ms after an erroneous response – the error-related negativity (ERN) - as a correlate of awareness-independent error processing. The short latency suggests an internal error monitoring system acting rapidly based on central information such as an efference copy signal. Studies on monkeys and humans have identified the thalamus as an important relay station for efference copy signals of ongoing saccades. The present study investigated error processing on an antisaccade task with ERPs in six patients with focal vascular damage to the thalamus and 28 control subjects. ERN amplitudes were significantly reduced in the patients, with the strongest ERN attenuation being observed in two patients with right mediodorsal and ventrolateral and bilateral ventrolateral damage, respectively. Although the number of errors was significantly higher in the thalamic lesion patients, the degree of ERN attenuation did not correlate with the error rate in the patients. The present data underline the role of the thalamus for the online monitoring of saccadic eye movements, albeit not providing unequivocal evidence in favour of an exclusive role of a particular thalamic site being involved in performance monitoring. By relaying saccade-related efference copy signals, the thalamus appears to enable fast error processing. Furthermore early error processing based on internal information may contribute to error awareness which was reduced in the patients.

Surprise and Error: Common Neuronal Architecture for the Processing of Errors and Novelty

“…It is conceivable that these regions have individuated functions related to salience processing, awareness, attention control, and the initiation of motor caution, all of which might be expected to occur in response to an error or a novel event. Interestingly, errors and novel events were also associated with activity in habenula (Ullsperger and Von Cramon, 2003;Bromberg-Martin and Hikosaka, 2011), and the ventrolateral anterior, ventral anterior, and mediodorsal nuclei of the thalamus (Peterburs et al, 2011;Seifert et al, 2011). Activity in these regions is often observed but rarely discussed in studies of error processing.…”

Asymmetric hemispheric contribution to ERPs in associative memory indexes goal relevance and quantity of information

“…Artifacts resulting from blinks were identified by using an independent component analysis (ICA) procedure. ICAs with a symmetric frontal positive topography reflecting blink artifacts were removed [35].…”

Quantitative Assessment of Chronic Thalamic Stroke

“…8 This procedure is a consolidated standard in the field. 9,10 We report as "damaged" the nuclei that both raters judged to be involved in the lesion.…”