Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on August 2, 2006
Cerebral Cortex 2007 17(6):1314-1322; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl042
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TimeFrequency Intracranial Source Localization of Feedback-Related EEG Activity in Hypothesis Testing
1 Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS UMR 6146, Université de Provence, Marseille, France, 2 Functional Brain Imaging Unit, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel, 3 Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, UK, 4 Neurosciences Cognitives et Imagerie Cérébrale, LENA, CNRS UPR 640, Centre Hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris, France
Address correspondence to David Papo, Functional Brain Imaging Unit, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Sourasky Medical Center, 6, Weizmann Street, 64239 Tel Aviv, Israel. Email: david.papo{at}chups.jussieu.fr.
The neural correlates of the response to performance feedback have been the object of numerous neuroimaging studies. However, the precise timing and functional meaning of the resulting activations are poorly understood. We studied the electroencephalographic response time locked to positive and negative performance feedback in a hypothesis testing paradigm. The signal was convoluted with a family of complex wavelets. Intracranial sources of activity at various narrow-band frequencies were estimated in the 100- to 400-ms time window following feedback onset. Positive and negative feedback were associated to 1) early parahippocampo-cingular sources of alpha oscillations, more posteriorly located and long lasting for negative feedback and to 2) late partially overlapping neural circuits comprising regions in prefrontal, cingular, and temporal cortices but operating at feedback-specific latencies and frequencies. The results were interpreted in the light of neurophysiological models of feedback and were used to discuss methodological issues in the study of high-level cognitive functions, including reasoning and decision making.
Key Words: dipole source localization EEG feedback hypothesis testing timefrequency analysis