Abstract
The medial prefrontal cortex (MFC) is critical for our ability to learn from previous mistakes. Here we provide evidence that neurophysiological oscillatory long-range synchrony is a mechanism of post-error adaptation that occurs even without conscious awareness of the error. During a visually signaled Go/No-Go task in which half of the No-Go cues were masked and thus not consciously perceived, response errors enhanced tonic (i.e., over 1–2 s) oscillatory synchrony between MFC and occipital cortex (OCC) leading up to and during the subsequent trial. Spectral Granger causality analyses demonstrated that MFC → OCC directional synchrony was enhanced during trials following both conscious and unconscious errors, whereas transient stimulus-induced occipital → MFC directional synchrony was independent of errors in the previous trial. Further, the strength of pre-trial MFC-occipital synchrony predicted individual differences in task performance. Together, these findings suggest that synchronous neurophysiological oscillations are a plausible mechanism of MFC-driven cognitive control that is independent of conscious awareness.
Highlights
Throughout life,we try to improve our performance on goal-directed tasks, in part by learning from our previous mistakes
The strength of pre-trial medial prefrontal cortex (MFC)-occipital synchrony predicted individual differences in task performance. These findings suggest that synchronous neurophysiological oscillations are a plausible mechanism of MFC-driven cognitive control that is independent of conscious awareness
We found a strong “burst” of MFC–occipital cortex (OCC) synchrony around 100–400 ms following the onset of the Go stimulus, in a relatively broad low-frequency range of about 2–12 Hz (Figure 2A)
Summary
Throughout life,we try to improve our performance on goal-directed tasks, in part by learning from our previous mistakes. Myriad studies spanning several species have implicated the MFC in action monitoring, conflict detection, error signaling, and reinforcement learning (Nieuwenhuis et al, 2004; Carter and van Veen, 2007) These studies show that MFC activity increases following errors or negative feedback (Ridderinkhof et al, 2004a,b). Researchers using fMRI (Egner and Hirsch, 2005) have revealed that activity in regions involved in task-relevant stimulus processing is enhanced following errors or conflicts This is in line with a large body of evidence revealing preparatory top-down modulatory effects in visual cortex when attentional demands are increased (Kastner and Ungerleider, 2000; Pessoa et al, 2003). We examined whether long-range neurophysiological oscillatory synchrony is a plausible mechanism by which the MFC engages top-down control over sensory processing following errors
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