The role of cingulate cortex in the detection of errors with and without awareness: a high-density electrical mapping study

Abstract

Error-processing research has demonstrated that the brain uses a specialized neural network to detect errors during task performance but the brain regions necessary for conscious awareness of an error are poorly understood. In the present study we show that two well-known error-related event-related potential (ERP) components, the error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe) have a differential relationship with awareness during performance of a manual response inhibition task optimized to examine error awareness. While the ERN was unaffected by the participants' conscious experience of errors, the Pe was only seen when participants were aware of committing an error. Source local..