Prediction of human errors by maladaptive changes in event-related brain networks

By Tom Eichele, Stefan Debener, Vince D. Calhoun, Karsten Specht, Andreas K. Engel, Kenneth Hugdahl, D. von Cramon, Markus Ullsperger. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008

495 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Humans engaged in monotonous tasks are susceptible to occasional errors that may lead to serious consequences, but little is known about brain activity patterns preceding errors. Using functional MRI and applying independent component analysis followed by deconvolution of hemodynamic responses, we studied error preceding brain activity on a trial-by-trial basis. We found a set of brain regions in which the temporal evolution of activation predicted performance errors. These maladaptive brain activity changes started to evolve ≈30 sec before the error. In particular, a coincident decrease of deactivation in default mode regions of the brain, together with a decline of activation in regions associated with maintaining task effort, raised the probability of future errors. Our findings provide insights into the brain network dynamics preceding human performance errors and suggest that monitoring of the identified precursor states may help in avoiding human errors in critical real-world situations.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c15ad939b2c636aa32a8df32514351cb2bec20ff

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

Large-Scale Brain Networks in Cognition: Emerging Principles (2010, background): “Previous studies have suggested that the inferior frontal gyrus and ACC are involved in a variety of monitoring, decision-making, and cognitive control processes (Crottaz-Herbette and Menon, 2006; Cole and Schneider, 2007; Johnston et al., 2007; Posner and Rothbart, 2007; Dosenbach et al., 2008; Eic”
Sustaining attention to simple tasks: a meta-analytic review of the neural mechanisms of vigilant attention. (2013, background): “Evidence for this assumption comes from a study (Eichele et al., 2008) that revealed a decline in dorsomedial PFC activity before erroneous responses, which may reflect a gradual " release of the brake, " shifting neural baseline motor activity too close to the motor action limit.”
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Resting state functional connectivity in addiction: Lessons learned and a road ahead (2012, background): “commission (Fig. 3C; Eichele et al., 2008) and protracted response”
Functional segmentation of the brain cortex using high model order group PICA (2009, methodology): “When the model order of the ICA estimation is increased, the separated BOLD signal sources have been shown to split into several functional nodes [Li et al., 2007; Ma et al., 2007; Malinen et al., 2007; Eichele et al., 2008].”
Saliency, switching, attention and control: a network model of insula function (2010, unknown): “…in a variety of monitoring, decision-making, and cognitive control processes (Cole and Schneider 2007; Crottaz-Herbette and Menon 2006; Dosenbach et al. 2008; Eichele et al. 2008; Johnston et al. 2007; Posner and Rothbart 2007), but the AI has not been a particular focus of most of these studies.”
A Baseline for the Multivariate Comparison of Resting-State Networks (2011, background): “…focused at the temporo-parietal junction (IC 71) and overlapping the alerting system (Fan et al., 2005), and an anterior cingulate and insular network (IC 55) observed to activate during demanding tasks and conflict processing (Ridderinkhof et al., 2004; Klein et al., 2007; Eichele et al., 2008).”
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Dynamic functional connectivity: Promise, issues, and interpretations (2013, methodology): “In addition, an ICAbased study showed that changes in DMN and a frontoparietal network were predictive of subsequent errors up to 30 s prior to the error (Eichele et al., 2008).”
On the relationship between the “default mode network” and the “social brain” (2012, unknown): “Regions of the DMN often show a deactivation when participants perform cognitive tasks and this degree of deactivation can be predictive of subsequent performance (Eichele et al., 2008).”
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Does Mind Wandering Reflect Executive Function or Executive Failure? Comment on and (2010, result): “This claim is in conflict with Smallwood and Schooler's (2006) view that mind wandering requires resources. work showed heightened activity during these attention-lapse trials (for similar results from other attention tasks, see Eichele et al., 2008; Li, Yan, Bergquist, & Sinha, 2007).”
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