altered error processing following vascular thalamic damage evidence from an antisaccade task修改错误处理后血管丘脑损害证据从人群的任务.pdfVIP

Altered Error Processing following Vascular Thalamic Damage: Evidence from an Antisaccade Task 1 1 3 3 2 Jutta Peterburs *, Giulio Pergola , Benno Koch , Michael Schwarz , Klaus-Peter Hoffmann , Irene Daum1, Christian Bellebaum1 1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neuropsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany, 2 Department of Neuroscience and Faculty of Biology and Biotechnology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany, 3 Department of Neurology, Klinikum Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany Abstract Event-related potentials (ERP) research has identified a negative deflection within about 100 to 150 ms after an erroneous response – the error-related negativity (ERN) - as a correlate of awareness-independent error processing. The short latency suggests an internal error monitoring system acting rapidly based on central information such as an efference copy signal. Studies on monkeys and humans have identified the thalamus as an important relay station for efference copy signals of ongoing saccades. The present study investigated error processing on an antisaccade task with ERPs in six patients with focal vascular damage to the thalamus and 28 control subjects. ERN amplitudes were significantly reduced in the patients, with the strongest ERN attenuation being observed in two patients with right mediodorsal and ventrolateral and bilateral ventrolateral damage, respectively. Although the number of errors was significantly higher in the thalamic lesion patients, the degree of ERN attenuation did not correlate with the error rate in the patients. The present data underline the role of the thalamus for the online monitoring of saccadic eye movements, albeit not providing unequivocal evidence i