Taylor Stephan F, Martis Brian, Fitzgerald Kate D, Welsh Robert C, Abelson James L, Liberzon Israel, Himle Joseph A, Gehring William J
Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA.
J Neurosci. 2006 Apr 12;26(15):4063-70. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4709-05.2006.
Making an error elicits activity from brain regions that monitor performance, especially the medial frontal cortex (MFC). However, uncertainty exists about whether the posterior or anterior/rostral MFC processes errors and to what degree affective responses to errors are mediated in the MFC, specifically the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC). To test the hypothesis that rACC mediates a type of affective response, we conceptualized affect in response to an error as a reaction to loss and amplified this response with a monetary penalty. While subjects performed a cognitive interference task during functional magnetic resonance imaging, hemodynamic activity in the rACC was significantly greater when subjects lost money as a result of an error compared with errors that did not lead to monetary loss. A significant interaction between the incentive conditions and error events demonstrated that the effect was not merely attributable to working harder to win (or not lose) money, although an effect of motivation was noted in the mid-MFC. Activation foci also occurred in similar regions of the posterior MFC for error and interference processing, which were not modulated by the incentive conditions. However, at the level of the individual subject, substantial functional variability occurred along the MFC during error processing, including foci in the rostral/anterior extent of the MFC not appearing in the group analysis. The findings support the hypothesis that the rostral extent of the MFC (rACC) processes loss-related responses to errors, and individual differences may account for some of the reported variation of error-related foci in the MFC.
犯错会引发大脑中监测表现的区域的活动，尤其是内侧前额叶皮质（MFC）。然而，关于MFC的后部还是前部/嘴侧部分处理错误，以及MFC（特别是嘴侧前扣带回皮质，rACC）在多大程度上介导对错误的情感反应，仍存在不确定性。为了检验rACC介导一种情感反应的假设，我们将对错误的情感反应概念化为对损失的反应，并通过金钱惩罚来放大这种反应。当受试者在功能磁共振成像期间执行认知干扰任务时，与未导致金钱损失的错误相比，因错误而赔钱的受试者的rACC血流动力学活动显著增强。激励条件和错误事件之间的显著交互作用表明，这种效应不仅仅归因于为了赢钱（或不输钱）而更加努力，尽管在MFC中部观察到了动机效应。在MFC后部的类似区域也出现了用于错误和干扰处理的激活灶，这些激活灶不受激励条件的调节。然而，在个体受试者水平上，在错误处理过程中，MFC沿线出现了显著的功能变异性，包括在组分析中未出现的MFC嘴侧/前部范围的病灶。这些发现支持了以下假设：MFC的嘴侧部分（rACC）处理与错误相关的损失反应，个体差异可能解释了MFC中一些与错误相关病灶的报道差异。
