Harsay Helga A, Spaan Marcus, Wijnen Jasper G, Ridderinkhof K Richard
Department of Psychology, Amsterdam Center for the Study of Adaptive Control in Brain and Behavior, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2012 Aug 27;6:246. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00246. eCollection 2012.
A body of work suggests similarities in the way we become aware of an error and process motivationally salient events. Yet, evidence for a shared neural mechanism has not been provided. A within subject investigation of the brain regions involved in error awareness and salience processing has not been reported. While the neural response to motivationally salient events is classically studied during target detection after longer target-to-target intervals in an oddball task and engages a widespread insula-thalamo-cortical brain network, error awareness has recently been linked to, most prominently, anterior insula cortex. Here we explore whether the anterior insula activation for error awareness is related to salience processing, by testing for activation overlap in subjects undergoing two different task settings. Using a within subjects design, we show activation overlap in six major brain areas during aware errors in an antisaccade task and during target detection after longer target-to-target intervals in an oddball task: anterior insula, anterior cingulate, supplementary motor area, thalamus, brainstem, and parietal lobe. Within subject analyses shows that the insula is engaged in both error awareness and the processing of salience, and that the anterior insula is more involved in both processes than the posterior insula. The results of a fine-grained spatial pattern overlap analysis between active clusters in the same subjects indicates that even if the anterior insula is activated for both error awareness and salience processing, the two types of processes might tend to activate non-identical neural ensembles on a finer-grained spatial level. Together, these outcomes suggest a similar functional phenomenon in the two different task settings. Error awareness and salience processing share a functional anatomy, with a tendency toward subregional dorsal and ventral specialization within the anterior insula.
一系列研究表明，我们意识到错误的方式与处理具有动机显著性的事件的方式存在相似之处。然而，尚未有证据表明存在共享的神经机制。目前尚未有关于参与错误意识和显著性处理的脑区的受试者内研究报告。虽然在奇偶数任务中，在较长的目标间隔之后进行目标检测时，经典地研究了对动机显著性事件的神经反应，且涉及广泛的脑岛 - 丘脑 - 皮质脑网络，但最近错误意识最主要地与前脑岛皮质相关联。在这里，我们通过测试在两种不同任务设置下的受试者的激活重叠情况，来探究前脑岛激活与错误意识是否与显著性处理有关。使用受试者内设计，我们发现在反扫视任务中的有意识错误期间以及在奇偶数任务中较长目标间隔后的目标检测期间，六个主要脑区存在激活重叠：前脑岛、前扣带回、辅助运动区、丘脑、脑干和顶叶。受试者内分析表明，脑岛参与了错误意识和显著性处理，并且前脑岛比后脑岛在这两个过程中参与程度更高。对同一受试者中活跃簇之间的细粒度空间模式重叠分析结果表明，即使前脑岛因错误意识和显著性处理均被激活，但在更细粒度的空间水平上，这两种类型的过程可能倾向于激活不同的神经集合。总之，这些结果表明在两种不同任务设置中存在类似的功能现象。错误意识和显著性处理共享一种功能解剖结构，在前脑岛内有背侧和腹侧亚区域特化的趋势。
