PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Markus Ullsperger

Publications and source records attributed to Markus Ullsperger.

18 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Neural correlates of error awareness.

Error processing results in a number of consequences on multiple levels. The posterior frontomedian cortex (pFMC) is involved in performance monitoring and signalling the need for adjustments, which can be observed as post-error speed-accuracy shifts at the behavioural level. Furthermore autonomic reactions to an error have been reported. The role of conscious error awareness for this processing cascade has received little attention of researchers so far. We examined the neural correlates of conscious error perception in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. An antisaccade task known to yield sufficient numbers of aware and unaware errors was used. Results from a metaanalysis were used to guide a region of interest (ROI) analysis of the fMRI data. Consistent with previous reports, error-related activity in the rostral cingulate zone (RCZ), the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and the insular cortex bilaterally was found. Whereas the RCZ activity did not differentiate between aware and unaware errors, activity in the left anterior inferior insular cortex was stronger for aware as compared to unaware errors. This could be due to increased awareness of the autonomic reaction to an error, or the increased autonomic reaction itself. Furthermore, post-error adjustments were only observed after aware errors and a correlation between post-error slowing and the hemodynamic activity in the RCZ was revealed. The data suggest that the RCZ activity alone is insufficient to drive error awareness. Its signal appears to be useful for post-error speed-accuracy adjustments only when the error is consciously perceived.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Single-trial EEG-fMRI reveals the dynamics of cognitive function.

Two major non-invasive techniques in cognitive neuroscience, electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have complementary advantages with regard to their spatial and temporal resolution. Recent hardware and software developments have made it feasible to acquire EEG and fMRI data simultaneously. We emphasize the potential of simultaneous EEG and fMRI recordings to pursue new strategies in cognitive neuroimaging. Specifically, we propose that, by exploiting the combined spatiotemporal resolution of the methods, the integration of EEG and fMRI recordings on a single-trial level enables the rich temporal dynamics of information processing to be characterized within spatially well-defined neural networks.

Brain↗
PubMed2006

The control of attention and actions: current research and future developments.

In this introductory article of the special issue of Brain Research, we first present an overview of some general questions relating to cognitive control. For instance, one of the questions that remain to be answered is what control mechanisms and their neural underpinnings really 'do', beyond what is done by more basic 'computational' or data processing systems in the brain. We then briefly describe the four major issues addressed in the separate articles of this issue, namely attentional orienting, task set switching, performance and error monitoring, and response inhibition. In conclusion, we focus on some new methodological directions and illustrate how the study of cognitive control may be augmented by relatively newly emerging theoretical and empirical perspectives.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

How does error correction differ from error signaling? An event-related potential study.

It has been a question of debate whether immediate error corrections in speeded forced-choice reaction time tasks require an error detection signal from the performance monitoring system or whether they reflect delayed correct responses that are executed after the premature error like in a horserace. In contrast, signaling the error by pressing a response button that is unrelated to the primary task is based on error detection. The present study investigates the similarities and differences between immediate error corrections and signaling responses by means of behavioral and event-related potential data. In a within-subject design, participants performed two sessions of the flanker task. In one session, errors had to be corrected by immediately pressing the correct response, in the other session, errors had to be signaled by pressing an error signaling button. Compared to the signaling session, in the correction session, more errors and error corrections were made, reaction times were shorter, and the amplitude of the error-related negativity (ERN) was reduced. Whereas the error significance did not seem to differ across session, participants have most likely reduced the motor threshold in the correction session to enable efficient immediate corrections. This interpretation is supported by the lateralized readiness potentials and is consistent with the response conflict monitoring hypothesis of the ERN. The present study demonstrates that differences in error corrections may be attributable to differences in motor threshold. We conclude that the error signaling procedure is a more direct and reliable way to behaviorally test the functional integrity of the performance monitoring system than the instruction to correct errors. The consequences for studies in patients and with pharmacological challenges are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

The role of intact frontostriatal circuits in error processing.

The basal ganglia have been suggested to play a key role in performance monitoring and resulting behavioral adjustments. It is assumed that the integration of prefrontal and motor cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuits provides contextual information to the motor anterior cingulate cortex regions to enable their function in performance monitoring. So far, direct evidence is missing, however. We addressed the involvement of frontostriatal circuits in performance monitoring by collecting event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and behavioral data in nine patients with focal basal ganglia lesions and seven patients with lateral prefrontal cortex lesions while they performed a flanker task. In both patient groups, the amplitude of the error-related negativity was reduced, diminishing the difference to the ERPs on correct responses. Despite these electrophysiological abnormalities, most of the patients were able to correct errors. Only in lateral prefrontal cortex patients whose lesions extended into the frontal white matter, disrupting the connections to the motor anterior cingulate cortex and the striatum, were error corrections severely impaired. In sum, the fronto-striato-thalamo-cortical circuits seem necessary for the generation of error-related negativity, even when brain plasticity has resulted in behavioral compensation of the damage. Thus, error-related ERPs in patients provide a sensitive measure of the integrity of the performance monitoring network.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Trial-by-trial coupling of concurrent electroencephalogram and functional magnetic resonance imaging identifies the dynamics of performance monitoring.

Goal-directed behavior requires the continuous monitoring and dynamic adjustment of ongoing actions. Here, we report a direct coupling between the event-related electroencephalogram (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and behavioral measures of performance monitoring in humans. By applying independent component analysis to EEG signals recorded simultaneously with fMRI, we found the single-trial error-related negativity of the EEG to be systematically related to behavior in the subsequent trial, thereby reflecting immediate behavioral adjustments of a cognitive performance monitoring system. Moreover, this trial-by-trial EEG measure of performance monitoring predicted the fMRI activity in the rostral cingulate zone, a brain region thought to play a key role in processing of response errors. We conclude that investigations of the dynamic coupling between EEG and fMRI provide a powerful approach for the study of higher order brain functions.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Performance monitoring in neurological and psychiatric patients.

Performance monitoring, an indispensable prerequisite of goal-directed, flexible behavior has attracted the interest of many researchers. Performance monitoring impairment may result in major daily-life problems in neurological and psychiatric patients. In this paper, I review the recent advances in clinical studies on performance monitoring in different populations of neurological and psychiatric patients. The findings are discussed with respect to current models of performance monitoring that have mostly arisen from correlational approaches. Moreover, perspectives for clinical use are given and methodological issues for patient studies of performance monitoring will be discussed.

Humans↗
PubMed2005

Electrophysiological correlates of error correction.

Evidence in the literature for the proposed relationship between the error-related negativity (ERN) and error correction is rather limited and inconsistent. We investigated corrective behavior and the ERN in two groups of participants who performed a flanker task. The correction-instructed group was asked to immediately correct all encountered errors. The noninstructed group was unaware that corrective responses were recorded. We found a negative deflection following corrected errors that peaked at 200-240 ms after the error. We refer to this negativity in the ERP waveform as correction-related negativity (CoRN). We assume that the correction-related negativity reflects evaluative functions of the motor system necessary for error corrections. ERN latency and amplitude were modulated by the occurrence and temporal characteristics of immediate corrections. These results are discussed within the framework of current models of performance monitoring.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Who comes first? The role of the prefrontal and parietal cortex in cognitive control.

Cognitive control processes enable us to adjust our behavior to changing environmental demands. Although neuropsychological studies suggest that the critical cortical region for cognitive control is the prefrontal cortex, neuro-imaging studies have emphasized the interplay of prefrontal and parietal cortices. This raises the fundamental question about the different contributions of prefrontal and parietal areas in cognitive control. It was assumed that the prefrontal cortex biases processing in posterior brain regions. This assumption leads to the hypothesis that neural activity in the prefrontal cortex should precede parietal activity in cognitive control. The present study tested this assumption by combining results from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) providing high spatial resolution and event-related potentials (ERPs) to gain high temporal resolution. We collected ERP data using a modified task-switching paradigm. In this paradigm, a situation where the same task was indicated by two different cues was compared with a situation where two cues indicated different tasks. Only the latter condition required updating of the task set. Task-set updating was associated with a midline negative ERP deflection peaking around 470 msec. We placed dipoles in regions activated in a previous fMRI study that used the same paradigm (left inferior frontal junction, right inferior frontal gyrus, right parietal cortex) and fitted their directions and magnitudes to the ERP effect. The frontal dipoles contributed to the ERP effect earlier than the parietal dipole, providing support for the view that the prefrontal cortex is involved in updating of general task representations and biases relevant stimulus-response associations in the parietal cortex.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

The conflict adaptation effect: it's not just priming.

Analyses of trial sequences in flanker tasks have revealed cognitive adaptation, reflected in a reduced interference effect following incompatible trials (Gratton, Coles, & Donchin, 1992). These effects have been explained on the basis of the response conflict monitoring model of Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, and Cohen (2001), who proposed that preceding response conflict triggers stronger topdown control, leading to performance improvements on subsequent trials of similar context. A recent study (Mayr, Awh, & Laurey, 2003) has challenged this account, suggesting that the behavioral adaptations are confined to trial sequences of exact trial repetitions and can therefore be explained by repetition priming. Here, we present two experiments in which the sequential dependency effect was present even on trial sequences that did not involve stimulus repeats. We discuss the data with respect to the conflict-monitoring and repetition-priming accounts.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2004

Directed forgetting in schizophrenia: prefrontal memory and inhibition deficits.

Schizophrenia is associated with cognitive deficits in the domains of working memory, strategic memory and other executive functions. In the current study we used a computerised and item-cued variant of the directed forgetting (DF) task to assess inhibitory processes in verbal memory. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and a group of matched controls were tested. Recognition memory was better for to-be-remembered (TBR) than for to-be-forgotten (TBF) words in both patients and controls. As compared to healthy controls the patients with schizophrenia showed overall memory deficits and difficulties to inhibit memories as indicated by a significant group by cue interaction and a smaller DF effect. The DF effect was associated with disease duration but not with symptom severity. Memory-related inhibition problems are difficult to assess in patients with schizophrenia and might be related to fronto-temporal disconnection.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

The role of the medial frontal cortex in cognitive control.

Adaptive goal-directed behavior involves monitoring of ongoing actions and performance outcomes, and subsequent adjustments of behavior and learning. We evaluate new findings in cognitive neuroscience concerning cortical interactions that subserve the recruitment and implementation of such cognitive control. A review of primate and human studies, along with a meta-analysis of the human functional neuroimaging literature, suggest that the detection of unfavorable outcomes, response errors, response conflict, and decision uncertainty elicits largely overlapping clusters of activation foci in an extensive part of the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC). A direct link is delineated between activity in this area and subsequent adjustments in performance. Emerging evidence points to functional interactions between the pMFC and the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), so that monitoring-related pMFC activity serves as a signal that engages regulatory processes in the LPFC to implement performance adjustments.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Neural correlates of error detection and error correction: is there a common neuroanatomical substrate?

Successful behaviour requires error detection resulting in remedial actions, such as immediate error correction. The present event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study in humans examined the neural correlates of error detection and error correction using a speeded modified flankers task. In order to investigate corrective behaviour, participants were randomly divided into two groups. The correction instructed group was asked to correct all encountered errors immediately. The correction not instructed group was unaware that corrective responses were recorded. The intention to correct errors significantly increased the correction rate. Brain activations correlating with error detection were isolated in the rostral cingulate zone and in the pre-supplementary motor area, supporting their important role in error processing. Error correction activated similar brain regions, suggesting a common neuroanatomical substrate. Additional activations were found in the parietal cortex, representing an interconnected cortical network, which processes somatosensory information of tactile stimuli.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Error monitoring using external feedback: specific roles of the habenular complex, the reward system, and the cingulate motor area revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The dopaminergic system has been shown to be involved in the processing of rewarding stimuli, specifically of errors in reward prediction, in animal studies as well as in recent neuroimaging studies in humans. Furthermore, a specific role of dopamine in the human homolog of the rostral cingulate motor area (rCMA) was proposed in a recent model of error detection. Negative feedback as well as self-detected errors elicit a negative event-related brain potential probably generated in the rCMA. We performed two experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the brain activity related to negative and positive feedback in a dynamically adaptive motion prediction task. Whereas positive feedback raised hemodynamic activity in the ventral striatum (nucleus accumbens), negative feedback activated the rCMA, the inferior anterior insula, and the epithalamus (habenular complex). These data demonstrate the role of the habenular complex in the control of the human reward system, a function previously hypothesized on the basis of animal research. The rCMA reacted only to errors with negative feedback but not to errors without feedback, which ruled out an influence of response conflict or uncertainty on its role in error detection by external signals.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Interactions of focal cortical lesions with error processing: evidence from event-related brain potentials.

Electrophysiological and hemodynamic studies have suggested that structures in the vicinity of the anterior cingulate cortex are involved in performance monitoring, particularly in detection of errors. Bidirectional interactions between the frontomedian system involved in performance monitoring and the lateral prefrontal cortex as well as the orbitofrontal cortex have been proposed, but few studies have directly addressed this issue. The authors used a speeded flankers task to investigate error-related event-related potentials in 3 patient groups with different focal cortical lesions. Whereas bilateral frontopolar lesions involving the orbitofrontal cortex as well as temporal lesions did not alter the error-related negativity (ERN), lesions of the lateral frontal cortex resulted in an abolition of the ERN and in a reduction of the error positivity.

Brain↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Neuroimaging of performance monitoring: error detection and beyond.

The ability to monitor performance and behavior is crucial for goal-directed, adaptive behavior in a changing environment. Performance monitoring has been extensively investigated using behavioral, electrophysiological and hemodynamic measures, and is still in the focus of many research projects. This paper gives an overview on neuroimaging of performance monitoring and the models which arose from several research approaches, taking into account the knowledge stemming from electrophysiological and lesion studies. Particular emphasis is put on error detection and response conflict monitoring, but also at motivational factors. Furthermore, the paper presents and discusses data from an fMRI study investigating the influence of error relevance on the hemodynamic correlates of error processing. By instruction and financial reward manipulation, the relevance of errors were block-wise modulated in a flanker paradigm. The results suggest that the engagement of the posterior frontomedian wall (pFMC) previously shown to be involved in performance monitoring is dependent on error relevance.

Adult↗