Performance- and control error-related neuronal signals in human ECoG recordings during a continuous task
Tomislav
Milekovic1, 2*,
Tonio
Ball1, 2, 3,
Andreas
Schulze-Bonhage1, 2, 3,
Ad
Aertsen1, 2 and
Carsten
Mehring1, 2
-
1
Albert-Ludwigs-University, Germany
-
2
BCCN Freiburg, Germany
-
3
University Hospital Freiburg, Germany
From previous studies it is known that error-related neuronal signals can be found in human EEG and fMRI. These studies investigated error-related signals using trial-based paradigms with a binary outcome, correct or false. Therefore, the reported error signals provide the information whether the subject achieved the goal of trial correctly or not. While these signals can be discriminated very reliably, the information they provide is binary and trial-based, and therefore limited. Thus, it is not clear if during a continuous BMI control task, e.g. continuous cursor control, such error-related activity can also be detected. In addition it is not clear if such responses are similar to the trial based error responses and if one can differentiate the error-related signals when related to different contexts. In the task we designed two kinds of errors were present: one related to the subject's performance, and the second one related to the subject's control. We recorded ECoG and EEG signals from two epilepsy patients playing a video game with two different kinds of sessions. (I) In movement sessions subjects played a simple game in which they controlled a spaceship with a joystick in the horizontal dimension (left-right). The task was to evade the blocks dropping from the top of the screen. The game was challenging enough so that the spaceship from time to time collided with a block (performance error). In addition the spaceship would occasionally move in the opposite direction to the joystick movement (control error). As a measure of performance, points were awarded for moving the spaceship. (II) In replay sessions subjects watched a replay of one of their earlier movement sessions. Control errors were noticeable only by both controlling the spaceship and simultaneously looking at the screen. We found separate ECoG electrodes and ECoG signal components that coded for control errors only, for performance errors only and for both control and performance errors. These electrodes were located in different brain regions including the motor cortex. The majority of the signal components related to errors were in the high gamma frequency range (40Hz - 128Hz). The observed neuronal error-related signals could not be attributed to the movement of the subjects as channels with error-related signals exhibited no or only very weak tuning for movements. Watching the spaceship collisions during the visual control sessions produced similar neuronal performance error signals but no neuronal control error signals. Results suggest that neuronal correlates of performance error and control error can be discriminated from the baseline activity and from one another during a continuous task. To fully verify this statement we will investigate in future work whether detection of these signals from the continuous ECoG recording is possible. When successful, such error detection from brain signals could be used to facilitate adaptation of the BMI decoder and improve the performance of BMI applications. Acknowledgements: Work supported by BMBF 01GQ0420 to BCCN Freiburg and BMBF GoBio grant 0313891.
Conference:
Bernstein Symposium 2008, Munich, Germany, 8 Oct - 10 Oct, 2008.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
All Abstracts
Citation:
Milekovic
T,
Ball
T,
Schulze-Bonhage
A,
Aertsen
A and
Mehring
C
(2008). Performance- and control error-related neuronal signals in human ECoG recordings during a continuous task.
Front. Comput. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
Bernstein Symposium 2008.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.10.2008.01.088
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Received:
17 Nov 2008;
Published Online:
17 Nov 2008.
*
Correspondence:
Tomislav Milekovic, Albert-Ludwigs-University, Freiburg, Germany, milekovic@bccn.uni-freiburg.de