Published March 2023 | v2
Journal Article Open

Neurophysiological mechanisms of error monitoring in human and non-human primates

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Abstract

Performance monitoring is an important executive function that allows us to gain insight into our own behaviour. This remarkable ability relies on the frontal cortex, and its impairment is an aspect of many psychiatric diseases. In recent years, recordings from the macaque and human medial frontal cortex have offered a detailed understanding of the neurophysiological substrate that underlies performance monitoring. Here we review the discovery of single-neuron correlates of error monitoring, a key aspect of performance monitoring, in both species. These neurons are the generators of the error-related negativity, which is a non-invasive biomarker that indexes error detection. We evaluate a set of tasks that allows the synergistic elucidation of the mechanisms of cognitive control across the two species, consider differences in brain anatomy and testing conditions across species, and describe the clinical relevance of these findings for understanding psychopathology. Last, we integrate the body of experimental facts into a theoretical framework that offers a new perspective on how error signals are computed in both species and makes novel, testable predictions.

Additional Information

The authors thank R. Adolphs, K. Silm and J. Brown for discussion and C. Holroyd for valuable comments. J.D.S. has been supported by the US National Institutes of Health and by the E. Bronson Ingram Chair in Neuroscience and is currently supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2022-04592). U.R. has been supported by the US National Institutes of Health (R01MH110831 and U01NS117839) and the NSF (BCS-2219800). A.S. has been supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship award.

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Created:
November 20, 2023
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November 20, 2023