The effect of static and dynamic visual stimulations on error-evoked brain responses

Error-related potentials (ErrPs) can reflect the brain's response to errors. Recently, it has been used in the studies on neural mechanisms of human cognition, such as error detection and conflict monitoring. Moreover, ErrPs have provided technical support for the development of brain-computer interface (BCI). However, the different effects of visual stimulation modes (dynamic or static) on ErrPs have not been revealed. This may seriously affect the recognition accuracy of the ErrPs in practical applications. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate how people respond to different types of visual stimulations. Nineteen participants were recruited in the ErrPs-based tasks with two visual stimulation modes (dynamic and static). The ErrPs were analyzed and the feature values (N1, P2, P3, N6 and P8, named by the occurrence time) were statistically compared. The results showed that the difference between correctness and error was reflected in P3, N6, P8 in dynamic stimulation; and N1, P3, N6 and P8 in static stimulation. In the event-related potential based on error, the differences between dynamic and static tasks were reflected in N1 and P2. In conclusion, this study found that the features with later occurrence were significantly affected by correctness and error in both cases, while the error-related change in N1 only existed under the static stimulation. We also found that the recognition of stimulation modes came earlier within about 300 ms after the start of visual stimulation.