Review
Event-related potentials, cognition, and behavior: A biological approach

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2005.04.002Get rights and content

Abstract

The prevailing cognitive-psychological accounts of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) assume that ERP components manifest information processing operations leading from stimulus to response. Since this view encounters numerous difficulties already analyzed in previous studies, an alternative view is presented here that regards cortical control of behavior as a repetitive sensorimotor cycle consisting of two phases: (i) feedforward anticipation and (ii) feedback cortical performance. This view allows us to interpret in an integrative manner numerous data obtained from very different domains of ERP studies: from biophysics of ERP waves to their relationship to the processing of language, in which verbal behavior is viewed as likewise controlled by the same two basic control processes: feedforward (hypothesis building) and feedback (hypothesis checking). The proposed approach is intentionally simplified, explaining numerous effects on the basis of few assumptions and relating several levels of analysis: neurophysiology, macroelectrical processes (i.e. ERPs), cognition and behavior. It can, therefore, be regarded as a first approximation to a general theory of ERPs.

Section snippets

A cognitive approach and a biological approach

Some trivial statements have non-trivial consequences. One such statement declares the method of event-related brain potentials (ERP) complex. Since the late 1950s, when this method entered the arsenal of psychophysiological techniques, a discussion has revolved around the methodological problems that hang, like Damokles' sword, over all results obtained using this method. These fundamental problems are: signal–noise ratio and the necessity of averaging; influence of extracerebral sources

Slow cortical potentials

Among different varieties of ERPs, slow cortical potentials (SCP) such as the contingent negative variation (CNV: Walter et al., 1964) and the Bereitschaftspotential (Kornhuber and Deecke, 1965) are probably the most well-studied with respect to both physiological origin and functional meaning. On the basis of numerous neurophysiological studies (Caspers et al., 1984, Creutzfeldt and Houchin, 1974, Martin, 1985, Mitzdorf, 1985, Speckmann and Walden, 1991) a theory of SCP (Birbaumer, 1997,

Attention-related negativities reflect feedforward anticipatory activity

As can be seen in the table 1, feedforward processes are supposed to manifest themselves in negative ERP components. Most of these components have been obtained and discussed in relation to the problem of selective attention (for review, see Giard et al., 2000, Herrmann and Knight, 2001, Näätänen, 1992). In such experiments, the space of stimuli is subdivided into two or more subspaces (channels). Subjects should respond to rare targets presented in only one of these subspaces, called the

Conclusion

In order to obtain information necessary for behavioral adjustment, the brain has to ascertain from sensory input whether this information is really present in the environment. ERPs lasting about 200–700 ms are assumed, on the present model, to reflect this process of asking questions and obtaining answers. The feedforward process of ‘formulating’ these questions is related to the anticipatory excitation of the dendrites in superficial cortical layers, and, so, to negative ERP waves such as Nd

Acknowledgements

The author is deeply indebted to Niels Birbaumer, Valentin Braitenberg, J. Scott Jordan, John Polich, and Rolf Verleger, without discussions with whom these ideas would not develop. Jeremy Hill considerably contributed to clarify and precision of language. Some experiments described here were supported by the German Research Society (DFG) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

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