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Error Negativity Does Not Reflect Conflict: A Reappraisal of Conflict Monitoring and Anterior Cingulate Cortex Activity

Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Marseille, France

Reprint requests should be sent to Borís Burle, Laboratoire de Neurobiologie de la Cognition, Université de Provence (CNRS), Case C, 3, Place Victor Hugo, 13331 Marseille, cedex 3, France, or via e-mail: boris.burle{at}univ-provence.fr.

Our ability to detect and correct errors is essential for our adaptive behavior. The conflict-loop theory states that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays a key role in detecting the need to increase control through conflict monitoring. Such monitoring is assumed to manifest itself in an electroencephalographic (EEG) component, the "error negativity" (N_e or "error-related negativity" [ERN]). We have directly tested the hypothesis that the ACC monitors conflict through simulation and experimental studies. Both the simulated and EEG traces were sorted, on a trial-by-trial basis, as a function of the degree of conflict, measured as the temporal overlap between incorrect and correct response activations. The simulations clearly show that conflict increases as temporal overlap between response activation increases, whereas the experimental results demonstrate that the amplitude of the N_e decreases as temporal overlap increases, suggesting that the ACC does not monitor conflict. At a functional level, the results show that the duration of the N_e depends on the time needed to correct (partial) errors, revealing an "on-line" modulation of control on a very short time scale.

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