Rostral and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex make dissociable contributions during antisaccade error commission

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Brain Imaging

Background:

• The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays a role in performance optimization and evaluation.
• Distinct dorsal (dACC) and rostral (rACC) regions contribute differently.
• Deactivation in rACC is linked to optimization, while activation in rACC and dACC is linked to evaluation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the differential roles of rACC and dACC in performance optimization and evaluation.
• To examine the timing of ACC activation during correct and error trials.
• To test the hypothesis that errors involve early rACC deactivation failure and later dACC/rACC activation.

Main Methods:

• Event-related functional MRI (fMRI) was used on 18 healthy subjects.
• Subjects performed prosaccade and antisaccade tasks.
• Hemodynamic responses were analyzed using a finite impulse-response model, comparing error and correct antisaccades.

Main Results:

• Errors were associated with an early failure of rACC deactivation, significantly in the rACC.
• Both rACC and dACC showed increased activation later in the trial for errors.
• Accurate performance correlated with rACC and default mode network deactivation.

Conclusions:

• Accurate performance relies on the deactivation of the rACC and associated default mode regions.
• Both rACC and dACC are involved in the evaluation of errors.
• The timing of ACC activation differentiates performance optimization from error evaluation.