Your Error’s Got me Feeling – How Empathy Relates to the Electrophysiological Correlates of Performance Monitoring

The error-related and feedback-related negativities (ERN and FRN) represent negative event-related potentials associated with the processing of errors and (negative) response outcomes. The neuronal source of these components is considered to be in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Monitoring one’s own behavior and the impact it may have on other people or observing other individuals perform and receive feedback for their actions may also engage empathy-related processes. Empathy is conceived of as a multifaceted construct involving both cognitive and affective components, partly also supported by the ACC. The present mini-review aims to summarize the sparse database linking the electrophysiological correlates of performance monitoring to empathy. While most studies so far provide largely indirect evidence for such an association – e.g., by pointing toward altered ERN/FRN signaling in populations characterized by deviations in empathic responding – fewer investigations establish more explicit links between the two concepts. The relationship between state and, less consistently, trait measures of empathy and action monitoring might be more pronounced for observational than for active participation

Illusion of control affects ERP amplitude reductions for auditory outcomes of self-generated actions.

AbstractThe reduction of neural responses to self‐generated stimuli compared to external stimuli is thought to result from the matching of motor‐based sensory predictions and sensory reafferences and to serve the identification of changes in the environment as caused by oneself. The amplitude of the auditory event‐related potential (ERP) component N1 seems to closely reflect this matching process, while the later positive component (P2/ P3a) has been associated with judgments of agency, which are also sensitive to contextual top‐down information. In this study, we examined the effect of perceived control over sound production on the processing of self‐generated and external stimuli, as reflected in these components. We used a new version of a classic two‐button choice task to induce different degrees of the illusion of control (IoC) and recorded ERPs for the processing of self‐generated and external sounds in a subsequent task. N1 amplitudes were reduced for self‐generated compared to external sounds, but not significantly affected by IoC. P2/3a amplitudes were affected by IoC: We found reduced P2/3a amplitudes after a high compared to a low IoC induction training, but only for self‐generated, not for external sounds. These findings suggest that prior contextual belief information induced by an IoC affects later processing as reflected in the P2/P3a, possibly for the formation of agency judgments, while early processing reflecting motor‐based predictions is not affected

Separate and overlapping functional roles for efference copies in the human thalamus.

Abstract How the perception of space is generated from the multiple maps in the brain is still an unsolved mystery in neuroscience. A neural pathway ascending from the superior colliculus through the medio-dorsal (MD) nucleus of thalamus to the frontal eye field has been identified in monkeys that conveys efference copy information about the metrics of upcoming eye movements. Information sent through this pathway stabilizes vision across saccades. We investigated whether this motor plan information might also shape spatial perception even when no saccades are performed. We studied patients with medial or lateral thalamic lesions (likely involving either the MD or the ventrolateral (VL) nuclei). Patients performed a double-step task testing motor updating, a trans-saccadic localization task testing visual updating, and a localization task during fixation testing a general role of motor signals for visual space in the absence of eye movements. Single patients with medial or lateral thalamic lesions showed deficits in the double-step task, reflecting insufficient transfer of efference copy. However, only a patient with a medial lesion showed impaired performance in the trans-saccadic localization task, suggesting that different types of efference copies contribute to motor and visual updating. During fixation, the MD patient localized stationary stimuli more accurately than healthy controls, suggesting that patients compensate the deficit in visual prediction of saccades - induced by the thalamic lesion - by relying on stationary visual references. We conclude that partially separable efference copy signals contribute to motor and visual stability in company of purely visual signals that are equally effective in supporting trans-saccadic perception

Altered Error Processing following Vascular Thalamic Damage: Evidence from an Antisaccade Task

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

Hippocampal state-dependent behavioral reflex to an identical sensory input in rats.

We examined the local field potential of the hippocampus to monitor brain states during a conditional discrimination task, in order to elucidate the relationship between ongoing brain states and a conditioned motor reflex. Five 10-week-old Wistar/ST male rats underwent a serial feature positive conditional discrimination task in eyeblink conditioning using a preceding light stimulus as a conditional cue for reinforced trials. In this task, a 2-s light stimulus signaled that the following 350-ms tone (conditioned stimulus) was reinforced with a co-terminating 100-ms periorbital electrical shock. The interval between the end of conditional cue and the onset of the conditioned stimulus was 4±1 s. The conditioned stimulus was not reinforced when the light was not presented. Animals successfully utilized the light stimulus as a conditional cue to drive differential responses to the identical conditioned stimulus. We found that presentation of the conditional cue elicited hippocampal theta oscillations, which persisted during the interval of conditional cue and the conditioned stimulus. Moreover, expression of the conditioned response to the tone (conditioned stimulus) was correlated with the appearance of theta oscillations immediately before the conditioned stimulus. These data support hippocampal involvement in the network underlying a conditional discrimination task in eyeblink conditioning. They also suggest that the preceding hippocampal activity can determine information processing of the tone stimulus in the cerebellum and its associated circuits

The role of the thalamus and the posterior parietal cortex in the processing of efference copy signals in humans

Mit jeder sakkadischen Augenbewegung muss die Repräsentation des visuellen Raumes aktualisiert werden, weil sich durch die Augenbewegung das retinale Bild verschiebt. Der posteriore Parietallappen spielt bei diesem "Updating-Prozess" eine wichtige Rolle, indem er Informationen über Augenbewegungen, in Form einer Efferenzkopie des neuronalen Bewegungsbefehls, und visuelle Informationen integriert. In Experiment 1 des in dieser Arbeit beschriebenen Forschungsprojektes wurde die Rolle des Thalamus bei der Verarbeitung von Efferenzkopie-Information untersucht. Patienten mit thalamischen Läsionen und gesunde Kontrollpersonen führten eine sakkadische Double-Step-Aufgabe durch, die die Verarbeitung von Efferenzkopie-Information erfordert. In den Experimenten 2 und 3 wurde der Zeitverlauf des Updating-Prozesses mit Hilfe ereigniskorrelierter Potentiale erfasst und in Experiment 4 wurde untersucht, ob die kortikale Verarbeitung der Efferenzkopie bei thalamischen Patienten verändert ist.Saccadic eye movement cause a slip of the retinal image. The representation of visual space therefore needs to be updated with every saccade. The updating process takes place in the posterior parietal cortex and saccade-related information is most probably provided by an efference copy of the neuronal movement command. In study 1 of the research project described in this thesis, the involvement of the thalamus in relaying efference copy information was explored. Patients with thalamic lesions and healthy control subjects performed a saccadic double-step task, which requires the use of efference copy information. Studies 2 and 3 aimed to assess the time course of the updating process in the parietal cortex, using event-related potentials (ERPs) and source-analysis techniques in healthy human subjects. Study 4 combined the approaches of studies 1 and 2 focussing on cortical processing during the performance of saccade sequences in thalamic lesion patients

The Effect of Training-Induced Visual Imageability on Electrophysiological Correlates of Novel Word Processing

The concreteness effect (CE) describes a processing advantage for concrete over abstract words. Electrophysiologically, the CE manifests in higher N400 and N700 amplitudes for concrete words. The contribution of the stimulus-inherent imageability to the electrophysiological correlates of the CE is not yet fully unraveled. This EEG study focused on the role of imageability irrespective of concreteness by examining the effects of training-induced visual imageability on the processing of novel words. In two training sessions, 21 healthy participants learned to associate novel words with pictures of novel objects as well as electron-microscopical structures and were additionally familiarized with novel words without any picture association. During a post-training EEG session, participants categorized trained novel words with or without picture association, together with real concrete and abstract words. Novel words associated with novel object pictures during the training elicited a higher N700 than familiarized novel words without picture-association. Crucially, this training-induced N700 effect resembled the CE found for real words. However, a CE on the N400 was found for real words, but no effect of imageability in novel words. The results suggest that the N400 CE for real words depends on the integration of multiple semantic features, while mere visual imageability might contribute to the CE in the N700 time window