Spontaneous neuronal activity in insula predicts post-error adjustments

Abstract

After committing an error, humans often adopt strategies to change error behaviors, this phenomenon is termed post-error adjustment. The post-error adjustment ability is fundamental to flexible behavior and survival in a complex, varying environment. Resting-state neural activity has been associated with a variety of cognitive abilities, yet its relevance to post-error adjustment has been unclear. Resting-state fMRI is a powerful tool for investigating this spontaneous brain activity, since it can reveal the correlation of the intrinsic functional architecture of the brain and the extrinsic behavior performance. The amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF, 0.01–0.08 Hz) is widely used as an indicator of spontaneous fluctuations in brain activity. It has been suggested to reflect individual differences in cognitive control and personality traits. Therefore, the investigation of the spontaneous brain activity related to the post-error adjustment will provide novel insight into the understanding of the generation mechanism of post-error adjustment. The current study employed a modified Go/NoGo task to investigate the intrinsic neural correlates of post-error adjustment by analyzing the ALFF. To yield a sufficient number of error trials, we instructed subjects to withhold their responses in two circumstances. (1) When word meaning and the font color of word were inconsistent, this trial was termed as incongruent Nogo; (2) when a word was presented on two consecutive trials (same meaning and same font color). Considering previous studies have demonstrated that anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and bilateral insula play an important role in the error monitoring and error adaptation, thus the anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral insula were selected as the regions of interest (ROIs) in the present study. Additionally, the small volume correction was performed for multiple comparison. Moreover, since low-frequency fluctuations in the gray matter were higher than those in the white matter, the ALFF was calculated only in the gray matter. As a result, the ALFF-behavior analysis revealed that the magnitude of post-error adjustment in reaction time was not correlated with the ALFF in ACC. However, the magnitude of post-error adjustment in reaction time was positively associated with the ALFF in bilateral insula. Specifically, stronger spontaneous neuronal activity in bilateral insula corresponded to slower post-error adjustments. Together, the findings suggest that spontaneous activity in the bilateral insula may be the neural indicator of the individual difference in post-error adjustment, which may predict the adjustive time of post-error behavior.