Feelings of helplessness increase ERN amplitudes in healthyindividuals

Abstract

Experiencing feelings of helplessness has repeatedly been reported to contribute to depressive symptoms and negative affect. In turn, depression and negative affective states are associated, among others, with impairments in performance monitoring. Thus, the question arises whether performance monitoring is also affected by feelings of helplessness.To this end, after the induction of feelings of helplessness via an unsolvable reasoning task, 37 participants (20 females) performed a modified version of a Flanker task. Based on a previously validated questionnaire, 17 participants were classified as helpless and 20 as not-helpless. Behavioral measures revealed no differences between helpless and not-helpless individuals. However, we observed enhanced Error-Related Negativity (ERN) amplitude differences between erroneous and correct responses in the helpless compared to the not-helpless group. Furthermore, correlational analysis revealed that higher scores of helplessness were associated with increased ERN difference scores. No influence of feelings of helplessness on later stages of performance monitoring was observed as indicated by Error-Positivity (Pe) amplitude.The present study is the first to demonstrate that feelings of helplessness modulate the neuronal correlates of performance monitoring. Thus, even a short-lasting subjective state manipulation can lead to ERN amplitude variation, probably via modulation of mesencephalic dopamine activity.

Error monitoring is related to processing internal affective states

“…The result that participants with low alexithymia showed enhanced error-monitoring activity with the emotional task set is in accordance with previous studies, which found increased Ne/ERN amplitudes when the activity of the affective system was increased by presenting task-irrelevant affective information (e.g., Pfabigan et al, 2013;Wiswede, Münte, Goschke, & Rüsseler, 2009). Note that the affective content of the task set enhanced exclusively the Ne/ERN on error trials, but did not affect the ERP in the Ne/ERN time window on correct trials.…”

“…However, errors themselves are aversive (e.g., Hajcak & Foti, 2008;Riesel, Weinberg, Moran, & Hajcak, 2013; but see Moser, Moran, Schroder, Donnellan, & Yeung, 2014), and not surprisingly, the Ne/ERN is modulated by motivational and affective variables. For instance, the component is increased following the induction of negative affect (Pfabigan et al, 2013;Wiswede, Münte, Goschke, & Rüsseler, 2009;, and in individuals with high negative affectivity (Hajcak, McDonald, & Simons, 2004;Luu, Collins, & Tucker, 2000) or anxiety (Hajcak, McDonald, & Simons, 2003;Weinberg, Olvet, & Hajcak, 2010;see Moser, Moran, Schroder, Donnellan & Yeung, 2013, for a review). Furthermore, the Ne/ERN amplitude is larger, when errors entail more negative consequences (Hajcak, Moser, Yeung, & Simons, 2005;Maier & Steinhauser, 2013), and predicts priming of negative word evaluation by erroneous responses (Aarts, De Houwer, & Pourtois, 2013).…”

The impact of a brief mindfulness meditation intervention on cognitive control and error-related performance monitoring

“…It is possible that there is a difference between a brief and fleeting exposure to meditation state and long-term meditation traits (such as emotional acceptance as measured in the Teper and Inzlicht study). That said, studies tend to indicate improved attention, rather than decreased attention, in those who practice mindfulness meditation (Jha et al, 2007; Tang et al, 2007; Zeidan et al, 2010; Moore et al, 2012) and there are several studies that do not show affective trait-related changes in Pe amplitude (Clayson et al, 2012; Larson et al, 2013; Pfabigan et al, 2013). Thus, while an interesting finding, future studies need to directly manipulate error salience, error awareness, orienting to errors, and mindfulness meditation in the moment vs. as a more ingrained trait to clarify the Pe and mindfulness relationship.…”

Effect of Mental Fatigue on Error Monitoring

“…The use of human participants followed the guidelines of the Helsinki Declaration and was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of China Astronaut Research and Training Center. Only participants with a minimum of 5 error trials which yielded distinct ERN peaks were included in further data analysis [27]. Four participants had to be excluded from further analysis due to data acquisition artifacts (n=2), or due to committing less than 5 errors (n=2).…”

“…Data were baseline-corrected from -400 to -200 ms for response-locked epochs before computation of averages for each condition. The minimum number of trials used for ERN (0-120 ms) was not less than 5 [27], and the ERN mean amplitudes were quantified at Fz/Cz/FC1/FC2 sites.…”