Symposium: When the brain errs
Wednesday, Sep 9, 2015
9:30-10:30
Hörsaal 3
Error signals and their weighting to guide adaptive behavior
Neuropsychology, Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany
markus.ullsperger@ovgu.de
The presentation will give an overview of signals coded in the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) which are related to monitoring performance and other action-relevant information. Evidence from EEG and fMRI for the representation of reward prediction errors, valence-free expectancy violations, and errors observed in others will be presented. It will be discussed how these pieces of information are weighted in the light of preceding outcome history thereby determining their impact on future adaptations. It will be argued that the performance monitoring network centered on the pMFC collects and weights action-relevant information from multiple different sources in a context-dependent manner and that accumulation of this information is used in the service of action optimization by guiding recruitment of cognitive control and and updating value representations which in turn influence decisions in similar future situations.