I act, therefore I err: EEG correlates of success and failure in a virtual throwing game

Abstract

What are the neural responses to success and failure in a throwing task? To answer this question, we compared Event Related Potentials (ERPs) correlated with success and failure during a highly-ecological-virtual game. Participants played a tennis-like game in an immersive 3D virtual world, against a computer player, by controlling a virtual tennis racket with a force feedback robotic arm.Results showed that success, i.e. hitting the target, and failure, by missing the target, evoked ERP's that differ by peak, latencies, scalp signal distributions, sLORETA source estimation, and time-frequency patterns. The success related grand averaged ERP at the Cz electrode, had two peaks - a negative peak at 244ms and a positive peak at 12ms, prior to the actual successful hit, suggesting a possible process of prediction of success. The grand averaged ERP correlated with failure at Cz, had two peaks, a negative peak at about 107ms and a positive peak at about 311ms post failure. These results suggest different top-down and bottom-up loops for success and failure, which seem to be rooted in the spatial arrangement of the virtual game. Although the latency of the latter is consistent with the error related potentials reported in the literature, the characteristic is unique to this specific error, and differ significantly from other error related potentials in the same environment. These results further provide a basis for EEG based assessment and prediction of user's successful or erroneous movements, and design of the feedback loop in EEG based Brain-Computer Interfaces.