title: Punishment has a lasting impact on error-related brain activity.
abstract: The current study examined whether punishment has direct and lasting effects on error-related brain activity, and whether this effect is larger with increasing trait anxiety. Participants were told that errors on a flanker task would be punished in some blocks but not others. Punishment was applied following 50% of errors in punished blocks during the first half of the experiment (i.e., acquisition), but never in the second half (i.e., extinction). The ERN was enhanced in the punished blocks in both experimental phases--this enhancement remained stable throughout the extinction phase. More anxious individuals were characterized by larger punishment-related modulations in the ERN. The study reveals evidence for lasting, punishment-based modulations of the ERN that increase with anxiety. These data suggest avenues for research to examine more specific learning-related mechanisms that link anxiety to overactive error monitoring.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, USA. anja.riesel@hu-berlin.de
authors.forename: Anja
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Riesel
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Weinberg
authors.forename: Tanja
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Endrass
authors.forename: Norbert
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kathmann
authors.forename: Greg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hajcak
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011678:Punishment / Q000523:psychology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult