Neural mechanisms involved in error processing: A comparison of errors made with and without awareness

Abstract

Event-related fMRI is a powerful tool for localising psychological functions to specific brain areas. However, the number of events required to produce stable activation maps is a poorly investigated and understood problem. Huettel and McCarthy [Huettel, S.A., McCarthy, G., 2001. The effects of single-trial averaging upon the spatial extent of fMRI activation. NeuroReport 12, 2411 -2416] have shown that the spatial extent of activation increases monotonically with the number of events in an analysis. In the present paper, this result is replicated and shown to be a consequence of the cross-correlation technique used to determine active voxels and does not hold, for example, for a GLM analysis. Another analysis technique, that does not depend on goodness-of-fit to the data, is also proposed. This technique calculates an impulse response function (IRF) for each voxel, finds the best fitting haemodynamic shape to the IRF and returns an area-under-the-curve (%AUC) activation measure. Using spatial extent as a measure, asymptotic behaviour is evident after as few as 25 events for the %AUC analysis technique in a finger-tapping task with non-overlapping haemodynamic responses and for both the GLM and %AUC techniques in a similar task that allows responses to overlap. The experimental validity of the %AUC technique to identify active brain regions while minimising false positive levels is demonstrated in a group study with 25 participants. D

Post-Error Behavior in Active Cocaine Users: Poor Awareness of Errors in the Presence of Intact Performance Adjustments

“…, a result observed previously with this task (Hester et al, 2005). Neither the post-STOP nor post-unaware-error effects differed between users and controls.…”

“…To examine conscious recognition of errors we administered the Error Awareness Task (EAT) (see Figure 1) (Hester et al, 2005), a motor Go/NoGo response inhibition task in which subjects make errors of commission of which they are aware (aware errors), or unaware (unaware errors). The EAT presents a serial stream of single color words in congruent fonts, with the word presented for 900 ms followed by a 600 ms inter-stimulus interval.…”

“…Two error-related processes were chosen to examine the potential influence of a hypoactive error-related neural response: error awareness and post-error cognitive control. Previous research suggests that the ACC is active during errors irrespective of awareness, whereas activity in prefrontal and parietal regions appears to differentiate awareness of an error (Hester et al, 2005;Nieuwenhuis et al, 2001). Post-error cognitive control, which has typically been studied by examining post-error slowing during cognitive control tasks (eg, Stroop task, Go/NoGo task, and Flanker task), has been characterized as a reciprocal relationship between anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, where ACC detects the requirement for, and the dPFC implements, greater cognitive control.…”

Frontal theta band oscillations predict error correction and posterror slowing in typing.

“…Hewig et al, 2011;Navarro-Cebrian & Kayser, 2013;Roger, Benar, Vidal, Hasbroucq, & Burle, 2010;Scheffers & Coles, 2000;Shalgi & Deouell, 2012;Wessel, Danielmeier, Morton, & Ullsperger, 2012), it contradicts the traditional view that ERN is related to implicit but not to explicit error awareness (e.g. Ehlis, Herrmann, Bernhard, & Fallgatter, 2005;Endrass et al, 2005Endrass et al, , 2007Hester, Foxe, Molholm, Shpaner, & Garavana, 2005;Hughes & Yeung, 2011;Nieuwenhuis et al, 2001;O'Connell et al, 2007;Overbeek et al, 2005;Steinhauser & Yeung, 2010).…”

Posterror speeding after threat-detection failure.

“…Some studies find similar neural correlated for reported and non-reported errors (Nieuwenhuis et al, 2001;Endrass et al, 2007Endrass et al, , 2012O'Connell et al, 2007;Shalgi et al, 2009;Hester et al, 2005Hester et al, , 2009Klein et al, 2007), whereas other studies find different neural correlates for aware and unaware errors (Steinhauser and Yeung, 2010;Wessel et al, 2011;Shalgi and Deouell, 2012). It must be considered, however, that most of these studies are limited to the cortical electrophysiology of error reactivity -behavioral adjustments have not been considered.…”