The Importance of Failure: Feedback-Related Negativity Predicts Motor Learning Efficiency

Learning from past mistakes is of prominent importance for successful future behavior. In the present study, we tested whether reinforcement learning signals in the brain are predictive of adequate learning of a sequence of motor actions. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while subjects en...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2010-07, Vol.20 (7), p.1596-1603
Main Authors: van der Helden, Jurjen, Boksem, Maarten A. S., Blom, Jorian H. G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ACC
Adolescent
Brain Mapping
Electroencephalography - methods
ERP
Evoked Potentials, Motor - physiology
Feedback
Female
FRN
Gyrus Cinguli - physiology
Humans
Male
Predictive Value of Tests
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Reinforcement (Psychology)
reinforcement learning
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Learning from past mistakes is of prominent importance for successful future behavior. In the present study, we tested whether reinforcement learning signals in the brain are predictive of adequate learning of a sequence of motor actions. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while subjects engaged in a sequence learning task. The results showed that brain responses to feedback (the feedback-related negativity [FRN]) predicted whether subjects learned to avoid an erroneous response the next time this action had to be performed. Our findings add to a growing literature on feedback-based performance adjustment, by showing that FRN amplitudes may reflect the acquisition of motor skill and the consolidation of contingencies between stimuli or cues and their associated responses, providing evidence that learning efficiency and future performance can be predicted by the neural response to current feedback: FRN amplitude associated with a mistake is predictive of whether this mistake will be repeated, or learned from.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhp224