TY - JOUR T1 - Global and Local Dynamics of High-Gamma Activity Underlying Error Processing in the Human Brain Revealed by Noninvasive and Intracranial EEG JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/166280 SP - 166280 AU - Martin Völker AU - Lukas D.J. Fiederer AU - Sofie Berberich AU - Jiří Hammer AU - Joos Behncke AU - Pavel Kršek AU - Martin Tomášek AU - Petr Marusič AU - Peter C. Reinacher AU - Volker A. Coenen AU - Andreas Schulze-Bonhage AU - Wolfram Burgard AU - Tonio Ball Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/08/10/166280.abstract N2 - Error detection in motor behavior is a fundamental cognitive function heavily relying on cortical information processing. Neuronal activity in the high-gamma frequency band (HGB) closely reflects such local cortical processing, but little is known about its role in error processing, particularly in the healthy human brain. Here we characterize the error-related response of the human brain based on data obtained with noninvasive EEG optimized for HGB mapping in 31 healthy subjects (15 females, 16 males), and additional intracranial EEG data from 9 epilepsy patients (4 females, 5 males). For the first time, our findings reveal a comprehensive picture of the global and local dynamics of error-related HGB activity in the human brain. On the global level as reflected in the noninvasive EEG, the error-related response started with an early component dominated by anterior brain regions, followed by a shift to parietal regions, and a subsequent phase characterized by sustained parietal HGB activity. This phase lasted for more than 1 s after the error onset. On the local level as reflected in the intracranial EEG, a cascade of both transient and sustained error-related responses involved an even more extended network, extending beyond frontal and parietal regions to the insula and hippocampus. HGB mapping appeared especially well suited to investigate late, sustained components of the error response, possibly linked to downstream functional stages such as error-related learning and behavioral adaptation. Our findings establish the basic spatio-temporal properties of HGB activity as a neuronal correlate of error processing, complementing traditional error-related potential studies.Significance Statement There is a great interest to understand how the brain deals with errors in goal-directed behavior. An important index of cortical information processing is fast oscillatory brain activity, particularly in the high-gamma band (above 50 Hz). Here we show for the first time that it is possible to detect error-related high-gamma responses with noninvasive techniques, characterize these responses comprehensively, and validate the EEG procedure for the detection of such signals. In addition, we also demonstrate the added value of intracranial recordings pinpointing the fine-grained spatio-temporal patterns in the error-related brain networks. We anticipate that the optimized noninvasive EEG techniques as described here will be helpful in many areas of cognitive neuroscience where fast oscillatory brain activity is of interest. ER -