EVENT-RELATED BRAIN POTENTIALS FOLLOWING INCORRECT FEEDBACK IN A TIME-ESTIMATION TASK - EVIDENCE FOR A GENERIC NEURAL SYSTEM FOR ERROR-DETECTION

We examined scalp-recorded event-related potentials following feedback stimuli in a time-estimation task. Six hundred msec after indicating the end of a 1 sec interval, subjects received a visual, auditory, or somatosensory stimulus that indicated whether the interval their had p roduced was correct. Following feedback indicating incorrect performan ce, a negative deflection occurred, whose characteristics corresponded closely to those of the component (the error-related negativity) that accompanies errors in choice reaction time tasks. Furthermore, equiva lent dipole analysis suggested that, for all three modalities, the dis tribution of the scalp potential was consistent with a local source in the anterior cingulate cortex or a more distributed source in the sup plementary motor areas. These loci correspond closely to those describ ed previously Tor the error-related negativity. We conclude that the e rror-related negativity is the manifestation of the activity of a ''ge netic'' neural system involved in error detection.