Information flow between subthalamic nucleus and posterior fronto-medial cortex during performance monitoring

Introduction: Learning new motor tasks requires the ability to monitor ongoing behavior, detect errors and modify the performance accordingly. Several brain areas are involved in these processes. According to the reinforcement learning theory, when action outcomes are worse than expected, midbrain dopaminergic neurons convey signals to the posterior fronto-medial cortex (pFMC). During an erroneous response, an error detection signal can be observed in the ongoing electroencephalogram (EEG), the so called error-related negativity (ERN), probably used by the pFMC for behavioral adjustments. Recently, some neurons…