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Brain activity predicts errors

A team of researchers from laboratories in America, Britain, Germany and Norway used an imaging machine to scan the brains of a group of volunteers who were set a “flanker” test.

This measures performance in the presence of distracting information: they were asked to respond as quickly as possible to the direction of an arrow flanked by other arrows that point in the same or opposite direction. Although the task is simple and repetitive, to keep providing the right answer demands a fair bit of brain power: people make a mistake about 10% of the time. When performing correctly the volunteers’ brains showed increased levels of activity in those parts associated with cognitive effort, as would be expected. However, these areas gradually became less active before errors were made. At the same time another set of regions in the brain became more active. These regions are part of a so-called “default mode network” and show increased used when people are resting or asleep. “