Abstract
Event-related potentials (ERP) research has identified a negative deflection within about 100 to 150 ms after an erroneous response – the error-related negativity (ERN) - as a correlate of awareness-independent error processing. The short latency suggests an internal error monitoring system acting rapidly based on central information such as an efference copy signal. Studies on monkeys and humans have identified the thalamus as an important relay station for efference copy signals of ongoing saccades. The present study investigated error processing on an antisaccade task with ERPs in six patients with focal vascular damage to the thalamus and 28 control subjects. ERN amplitudes were significantly reduced in the patients, with the strongest ERN attenuation being observed in two patients with right mediodorsal and ventrolateral and bilateral ventrolateral damage, respectively. Although the number of errors was significantly higher in the thalamic lesion patients, the degree of ERN attenuation did not correlate with the error rate in the patients. The present data underline the role of the thalamus for the online monitoring of saccadic eye movements, albeit not providing unequivocal evidence in favour of an exclusive role of a particular thalamic site being involved in performance monitoring. By relaying saccade-related efference copy signals, the thalamus appears to enable fast error processing. Furthermore early error processing based on internal information may contribute to error awareness which was reduced in the patients.
Highlights
Performance monitoring and flexible behavioural control are necessary in order to adapt and to optimize behaviour in accordance with changing environmental demands
Altered error processing primarily refers to smaller differences between event-related potential (ERP) of erroneous prosaccades and correct antisaccades
Deficit patterns in individual patients tentatively suggest an important role of the ventrolateral thalamus in online saccade monitoring
Summary
Performance monitoring and flexible behavioural control are necessary in order to adapt and to optimize behaviour in accordance with changing environmental demands. The neural underpinnings of error processing, i.e. the detection and correction of performance errors, involve a network of midbrain, basal ganglia (BG) and frontal cortical structures, with a prominent role of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) [1,2,3,4]. A pronounced reduction of the ERN was shown in a patient with a rare focal lesion of the rostral-tomiddorsal ACC [13]. Reports of ERN attenuation in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease [3], Huntington’s disease [14] and lesions to the basal ganglia [15] or the orbitofrontal cortex [16] indicate a crucial role of fronto-striato-thalamocortical feedback circuits for error processing and performance monitoring
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