Janssen Denise J C, Poljac Edita, Bekkering Harold
Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands,
Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Department of Psychology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2016 Aug;11(8):1280-9. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsw033. Epub 2016 Mar 12.
Several theories have been proposed to account for the medial frontal activity that is elicited during the evaluation of outcomes. Respectively, these theories claim that the medial frontal response reflects (i) the absolute deviation between the value of an outcome and its expected value (i.e. an absolute prediction error); (ii) the deviation between actual and expected outcomes, with a specific sensitivity to outcomes that are worse than expected (i.e. a negative prediction error); (iii) a binary evaluation in terms of good and bad outcomes. In the current electroencephalography study, participants were presented with cues that induced specific predictions for the values of trial outcomes (a gain or loss of points). The actual outcomes occasionally deviated from the predicted values, producing prediction errors with parametrically varying size. Analysis of the medial frontal theta activity in response to the outcomes demonstrated a specific sensitivity to the occurrence of a loss of points when a gain had been predicted. However, the absolute deviation with respect to the predicted value did not modulate the theta response. This finding is consistent with the idea that outcome monitoring activity measured over medial frontal cortex is sensitive to the binary distinction between good and bad outcomes.
已经提出了几种理论来解释在结果评估过程中引发的内侧额叶活动。这些理论分别认为，内侧额叶反应反映了：（i）结果值与其预期值之间的绝对偏差（即绝对预测误差）；（ii）实际结果与预期结果之间的偏差，对比预期更差的结果具有特定敏感性（即负预测误差）；（iii）根据好坏结果进行的二元评估。在当前的脑电图研究中，向参与者呈现了诱导对试验结果值（得分的增减）进行特定预测的线索。实际结果偶尔会偏离预测值，产生大小参数变化的预测误差。对内侧额叶θ活动对结果的反应分析表明，当预测为增益时，对出现扣分具有特定敏感性。然而，相对于预测值的绝对偏差并未调节θ反应。这一发现与内侧额叶皮层上测量的结果监测活动对好坏结果的二元区分敏感的观点一致。
