A Brain Event Related to the Making of a Sensory Discrimination

Event-related potentials associated with detected targets in a vigilance task were analyzed in two ways: (i) by sorting the potentials in terms of sequential reaction time bins of 50 milliseconds and (ii) by examining the single trial waveforms. A negative component (N2) covaried in latency with rea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 1979-03, Vol.203 (4387), p.1358-1361
Main Authors: Ritter, Walter, Simson, Richard, Vaughan, Herbert G., Friedman, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analytical estimating
Behavior - physiology
Brain - physiology
Causal covariation
Cognition - physiology
Cognitive psychology
Correlations
Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology
Evoked Potentials
Experimentation
Humans
Mental stimulation
Pitch Discrimination - physiology
Scalp
Sensory discrimination
Time Factors
Vertices
Waveforms
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Summary:Event-related potentials associated with detected targets in a vigilance task were analyzed in two ways: (i) by sorting the potentials in terms of sequential reaction time bins of 50 milliseconds and (ii) by examining the single trial waveforms. A negative component (N2) covaried in latency with reaction time. These results support the hypothesis that N2 reflects a decision process which controls behavioral responses in sensory discrimination tasks.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.424760