Evidence for a role for the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in disengaging from an incorrect action.

Abstract

Adjusting for an error requires both disengaging from the wrong course of action and initiating a corrective response. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) has been implicated in both these processes in the decision-making and action monitoring literatures. Here, we aimed to distinguish between these putative functions with a variant of the Eriksen flanker task that manipulated response requirements (i.e. one or two finger responses). We found that two event-related potentials originating from the dACC (error-related negativity (ERN) and anterior N2) only reflected the representation of the incorrect response: these waveforms were larger when the incorrect response involved two fingers rather than one finger. The increase in ERN magnitude was also accompanied by a reduction in spontaneous error corrections. These results argue that activity in the dACC reflects a process involved in disengaging from an ongoing incorrect action, clearing the way for the correct response.