Dissociation between conflict detection and error monitoring in the human anterior cingulate cortex

Abstract

The relative importance of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for the detection and resolution of response conflicts versus its role in error monitoring remains under debate. One disputed issue is whether conflict detection and error monitoring can be viewed as unitary functions performed by the same region of the ACC, or whether these processes can be dissociated functionally and anatomically. We used a combination of electrophysiological and neuropsychological methods to assess these competing hypotheses. A neurological patient with a rare focal lesion of rostral-tomiddorsal ACC was tested in an event-related potential study designed to track the time course of neural activity during conflicts and erroneous responses. Compared with controls, the errorrelated negativity component after incorrect responses was attenuated in the patient, accompanied by lower error-correction rates. Conversely, the stimulus-locked component on correct conflict trials, the N450, was enhanced, and behavioral performance was impaired. We hypothesize that intact regions of lateral prefrontal cortex were able to detect response conflict, but damage to the dorsal ACC impaired response inhibition, which may be due to disconnection from cingulate and supplementary motor areas. The results implicate rostral-dorsal ACC in error monitoring and suggest this function can be dissociated from conflict-detection processes.

A cognitive neuroscience perspective on psychopathy: Evidence for paralimbic system dysfunction

“…Recently, Hornak and colleagues have shown that selective lesions to bilateral anterior cingulate cortex produce disturbances in personality functioning similar to those observed in patients with orbital frontal lesions (Hornak et al, 2003). In humans, anterior cingulate lesions lead to perseveration (Mesulam, 2000), difficulties in affective face and voice identification (Hornak et al, 2003), error monitoring (Swick and Jovanovic, 2002;Swick and Turken, 2002;Turken and Swick, 1999) and response inhibition abnormalities (Degos et al, 1993;Tekin and Cummings, 2002). Psychopathy has long been associated with perseveration (see review by , apathy (Cleckley, 1941;McCord and McCord, 1964), difficulties in identifying some affective face stimuli (Blair et al, 1997;Kosson et al, 2002), and more recently, error monitoring (Bates et al, submitted for publication) and response inhibition abnormalities (Kiehl et al, 2000b;Lapierre et al, 1995).…”

New advances in the neural correlates of insight: A decade in review of the insightful brain

“…Neuroimaging studies on the neural correlates of economic and moral decision-making demonstrate that the bilateral PCC (especially the right PCC) is associated with the expected reward probability of expected economic utility [38], expected moral utility, practical moral utility, and event probabilities (primarily right PCC) [39]. The PCC may assist some motor areas in conflict resolution after the prefrontal cortex has monitored the response conflict [40,41]. Therefore, the right PCC may be primarily responsible for risk and confidence assessment in decision-making, which suggests that the participants were more confident in judging the non-insight response.…”

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

“…They argued that a more complex model, where the ACC detected properties of the stimuli that required information held in the prefrontal cortices for interpretation, and potentially also implementation of corrective behavior. Swick and Turken (2002) presented a single case, RN, who had an extensive left hemisphere ACC lesion that was associated with impaired correction but intact post-error slowing when performing the Stroop task. ERP data from this patient indicated a similar result to Gehring and Knight's patients, with the ERN waveform unable to be distinguished from the equivalent negative ERP waveform during correct trials.…”

“…Unfortunately this model, nor others attempting to explain the error-related neural and behavioral processes (Botvinick et al, 2001;Braver et al, 2002), have as yet attempted to explain the specific results obtained by either Gehring and Knight (2000) or Swick and Turken (2002). The deficient error correction observed in those studies (and the lower level of performance adaptation in the current study), appears consistent with the modelling from Holroyd and co-workers, as presumably diminished ACC activity is indicative of dysfunction in the cortical 'interpreter' of mesencephalic dopamine signals from the basal ganglia.…”