title: The Feedback-related Negativity Reflects the Combination of Instantaneous and Long-term Values of Decision Outcomes.
abstract: Hundreds of ERP studies have reported a midfrontal negative-going amplitude shift following negative compared with positive action outcomes. This feedback-related negativity (FRN) effect is typically thought to reflect an early and binary mechanism of action evaluation in the posterior midcingulate cortex. However, in prior research on the FRN effect, the instantaneous value and the long-term value of action outcomes have been perfectly confounded. That is, instantaneously positive outcomes were generally consistent with task goals, whereas instantaneously negative outcomes were inconsistent with task goals. In this study, we disentangled these two outcome aspects in two experiments. Our results reveal an interaction of instantaneous and long-term outcome values. More precisely, our findings strongly suggest that the FRN effect is mainly driven by a reward positivity, which is evoked only by outcomes that possess an instantaneously positive value and also help the organism to reach its long-term goals. These findings add to a recent literature according to which the posterior midcingulate cortex acts as a hierarchical reinforcement learning system and suggest that this system integrates instant and long-term action-outcome values. This, in turn, might be crucial for learning optimal behavioral strategies in a given setting.
authors.affiliation: University of Osnabrück.
authors.forename: Roman
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Osinsky
authors.affiliation: University of Osnabrück.
authors.forename: Natalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ulrich
authors.affiliation: University of Würzburg.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mussel
authors.affiliation: University of Würzburg.
authors.forename: Lena
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Feser
authors.affiliation: University of Würzburg.
authors.forename: Aruni
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gunawardena
authors.affiliation: University of Würzburg.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hewig
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D030141:Feedback, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012201:Reward; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult