ANTERIOR CINGULATE CORTEX, ERROR-DETECTION, AND THE ONLINE MONITORINGOF PERFORMANCE

An unresolved question in neuroscience and psychology is how the brain monitors performance to regulate behavior. It has been proposed that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), on the medial surface of the fron tal lobe, contributes to performance monitoring by detecting errors. I n this study, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine ACC function. Results confirm that this region shows a ctivity during erroneous responses. However, activity was also observe d in the same region during correct responses under conditions of incr eased response competition. This suggests that the ACC detects conditi ons under which errors are likely to occur rather than errors themselv es.