Neural bases of performance monitoring

This chapter focuses on performance monitoring at the level of goal-directed behaviour at which action outcomes clearly have an emotional and motivational value. The discovery of the error-related negativity (ERN) in the early 1990s initiated a fast-growing new field of research. In the following 25 years, numerous further electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) correlates associated with different instances of performance monitoring have been described. FMRI results have consistently implicated the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) in performance monitoring. Response errors, negative feedback, increased difficulty, and response conflict have been shown to increase the fMRI signal in the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC), pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), and adjacent areas. On the basis of anatomical findings and neuropsychological studies, a performance monitoring network of brain regions connected with the posterior medial frontal cortex pMFC has been described. The ERN has proved to be a robust, sensitive, and specific measure of the functional integrity of this network.