The Importance of Failure: Feedback-Related Negativity Predicts Motor Learning Efficiency

Abstract

Learning from past mistakes is of prominent importance for successful future behavior. In the present study, we tested whether reinforcement learning signals in the brain are predictive of adequate learning of a sequence of motor actions. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while subjects engaged in a sequence learning task. The results showed that brain responses to feedback (the feedback-related negativity [FRN]) predicted whether subjects learned to avoid an erroneous response the next time this action had to be performed. Our findings add to a growing literature on feedback-based performance adjustment, by showing that FRN amplitudes may reflect the acquisition of motor skill and the consolidation of contingencies between stimuli or cues and their associated responses, providing evidence that learning efficiency and future performance can be predicted by the neural response to current feedback: FRN amplitude associated with a mistake is predictive of whether this mistake will be repeated, or learned from.

Worse than feared? Failure induction modulates the electrophysiological signature of error monitoring during subsequent learning

“…Our finding that the failure-related Ne/ERN enhancement was accompanied by higher posterror accuracy supports this view. Similar conclusions have been drawn from previous studies demonstrating that activity in the medial prefrontal error-processing system predicted the correctness of future responses (Hester, Barre, Murphy, Silk, & Mattingley, 2008;van der Helden, Boksem, & Blom, 2010). Moreover, findings by Frank et al (2005) suggest a specific relation between Ne/ERN amplitude and a bias to learn more from bad than from good choices.…”

Electrophysiological correlates of motor sequence learning

“…Results from correlational analyses showed that the amplitude of the ERN tended to increase with the number of learning blocks. In a trial-and-error motor learning task, the ERN amplitude following a feedback (commonly referred to as the feedback-related negativity; FRN) has been shown to predict motor learning efficiency [26]. In this study, an enhanced FRN was found for errors that were subsequently adjusted compared to errors that were repeated.…”

Errors Affect Hypothetical Intertemporal Food Choice in Women

“…For example, a dieter facing a delicious dessert in an isolated occasion is less likely to identify the conflict between her ultimate goal (i.e., losing weight) and the tempting high-caloric food, than when considering dessert for multiple similar future consumptions [100]. Thus, our modified version of the Stop-signal task might have induced subjects to face, in a brief lapse of time, multiple error signals and conflict concerning a specific food, thereby priming avoidance motivation for events associated with negative outcomes and more self-controlled decisions [39]–[40], [46]–[47].…”

“…As aversive events, errors produce a negative neural wave (error-related negativity, ERN; [41], [42]), generated in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) (e.g., [43]), both when subjects become aware of having committed a mistake and when they are not explicitly aware of making the error [43]–[44]. It has been suggested that the ERN may signify affective processing in response to errors [45], and individuals with larger ERNs showed enhanced avoidance learning for events associated with negative outcomes ([39]–[40], [46]; see also [47]). …”