EEG error-related potentials encode magnitude of errors and individual perceptual thresholds

Abstract

Error-related potentials (ErrP) are a prominent electroencephalogram (EEG) correlate of performance monitoring, and so crucial for learning and adapting our behavior. Although there exists an agreement that ErrP signal awareness to errors, it remains poorly understood whether they encode further information. Here we report an experiment with sixteen participants during three recording sessions in which occasional visuomotor rotations of varying magnitude occurred during a cursor reaching task. We designed a brain-computer interface (BCI) to detect ErrP in single trials that provided real-time feedback to participants by changing the color of the cursor upon ErrP detection. The individual ErrP-BCI decoders exhibited good transfer across recording sessions and scalability over the varying magnitude of errors. Our results indicate that ErrPs encode not only the conscious perception of errors, but also their magnitude, in their amplitude and latency. Furthermore, a non-linear relationship between the ErrP-BCI output and the magnitude of errors predicts individual perceptual thresholds to detect rotations. The uncovered relationship is consistent with non-human primate studies, which found a similar relationship between the size of errors and simple spike activity of Purkinje cells, and we conjecture a cerebellar contribution to ErrP. Our experimental setup and findings open new avenues to probe and extend current theories of performance monitoring, which are based on response conflict tasks, by incorporating continuous human-interaction tasks as well as analysis of the ErrP complex as a whole rather than individual peaks.

Inferring individual evaluation criteria for reaching trajectories with obstacle avoidance from EEG signals

“…Previous studies showed that ErrPs encode subjective aspects of performance monitoring such as consciousness 77,78 , confidence 79 and individual ability to perceive errors 80 . In ErrP-based BMI applications, ErrP decoding probabilities were exploited to teach (quasi) optimal policies to external agents 14,19,81,82 .…”

Robustness and adaptability of sensorimotor skills in expert piano performance

“…In this study, we focused on EEG-based ERPs as a candidate neural signature that emerges in response to transient sensory perturbation (Maidhof et al, 2010; Strübing et al, 2012; Sammler et al, 2013; Bianco et al, 2016). ERPs are characterized by specific patterns of EEG activity in response to particular stimuli or events, encoding valuable neural information about the processing of cognitive, sensory, and motor functions (Polich, 2007; van Dinteren et al, 2014; Hirano et al, 2020; Iwane et al, 2023). This neural index enables us to shed light on cognitive and sensorimotor processes.…”

“…This neural index enables us to shed light on cognitive and sensorimotor processes. ERPs can be analyzed to identify components based on their latency from the onset of particular stimuli or events (Squires et al, 1975; van Dinteren et al, 2014; Iwane et al, 2023). Among them, we drew attention to the observations of the N180 and P300 components.…”

“…Among them, we drew attention to the observations of the N180 and P300 components. The negative potential around 180 ms has been suggested to be the error-related negativity (ERN), which is an index of the discrepancy between expected and actual occurrence of events (Maidhof et al 2010; Proverbio et al 2017) as well as performance monitoring (Iwane et al, 2023). ERN often emerges from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) located in the frontal cortex when individuals receive an erroneous action (Ullsperger and von Cramon, 2001; Brázdil et al, 2002).…”

“…Thus, the ACC has been a candidate brain region responsible for error detection. Recent human EEG studies have provided further evidence that ERNs code not only the awareness of errors but also the magnitude of errors in their amplitude (Spinelli et al, 2018; Iwane et al, 2023). As for the P300 component, this long-latency response is one of the most commonly reported components.…”