Retest reliability of medial frontal negativities during performance monitoring SIDNEY J. SEGALOWITZ, DIANE L. SANTESSO, TIMOTHY I. MURPHY, DIRK HOMAN, DIMITRA K. CHANTZIANTONIOU, and SONIA KHAN Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada Abstract The error-related negativity (ERN) and feedback-related negativity (FRN) have been used as electrophysiological indices of performance monitoring produced in response to internally generated (errors) and externally generated (feedback) activations of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). No studies to date have systematically examined the measurement reliability of these components. In this article, we present the retest reliability of the ERN and FRN during response tasks designed to elicit errors or feedback responses on two occasions. Data from four experiments are presented in which participants performed tasks over various periods of time. Results indicate good retest reliability of the ERN and FRN amplitudes and source generation of these components. The present article provides important validation of the ERN and FRN as stable and trait-like electrophysiological reflections of performance monitoring and ACC functional integrity. Descriptors: Reliability, ERN, FRN, Performance monitoring, LORETA, GeoSource The medial frontal cortex plays an important role in online monitoring of performance and evaluation of performance out- comes (Luu, Tucker, Derryberry, Reed, & Poulsen, 2003; Rid- derinkhof, Ullsperger, Crone, & Nieuwenhuis, 2004). Error response detection elicits the error-related negativity (ERN or Ne; Falkenstein, Hoormann, Christ, & Hohnsbein, 2000), which appears about 80 ms following errors and is associated with ac- tivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC; Herrmann, Rommler, Ehlis, Heidrich, & Fallgatter, 2004; Holroyd & Coles, 2007; Turken & Swick, 2008) among other medial frontal regions (Stemmer, Segalowitz, Witzke, & Scho¨ nle, 2004; Turken & Swick, 2008). Closely related to the ERN is the feedback-related negativitiy (FRN), which is elicited following performance feed- back and peaks about 300 ms after feedback presentation. Sim- ilar to the ERN, the FRN has been localized to various regions of the cingulate cortex including the dACC (Gehring & Wil- loughby, 2002; Miltner, Braun, & Coles, 1997), and the medial frontal cortex (Mu¨ ller, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Munte, 2005; Nieuwenhuis, Slagter, von Geusau, Heslenfeld, & Holroyd, 2005; Van Veen, Holroyd, Cohen, Venger, & Carter, 2004) and is also thought to be dependent on the dopamine system (Holroyd & Coles, 2002). Both performance-monitoring event-related potential (ERP) components have been widely used as an index of (1) general performance monitoring when comparing performance against intended goals (Bernstein, Scheffers, & Coles, 1995; Falkenstein et al., 2000); (2) state- and trait-like affective responses to per- formance outcomesFwhether they are internally (e.g., errors) or externally (e.g., feedback) generated (ERN: Hajcak, Holroyd, Moser, & Simons, 2005; Luu, Collins, & Tucker, 2000; Pailing & Segalowitz, 2004; Santesso & Segalowitz, 2009; FRN: Santesso, Birk, Goetz, Ratner, & Pizzagalli, 2008; Santesso, Steele, et al., 2008; Tucker, Luu, Frishkoff, Quiring, & Poulsen, 2003); and (3) the integrity and/or the flexibility of the reinforcement learning sig- nal originating in the basal ganglia and transmitted to the anterior cingulate cortex via the mesencephalic dopamine system (Holroyd & Coles, 2002) in healthy adults (de Bruijn, Hulstijn, Verkes, Ruigt, & Sabbe, 2004; Santesso et al., 2009), patients (Stemmer, Segalo- witz, Dywan, Panisset, & Melmed, 2007), and developmental pop- ulations (Davies, Segalowitz, & Gavin, 2004; Mathewson, Dywan, & Segalowitz, 2005; Santesso & Segalowitz, 2008). One would expect some regularity in the performance-mon- itoring process and the brain system driving it. Although one might expect instability in ERNs and FRNs over time because of developmental changes in the dopamine system and medial frontal cortex (e.g., Cunningham, Bhattacharyya & Benes, 2002; Lambe, Krimer, & Goldman-Rakic, 2000; Van Bogaert, Wikler, Damhaut, Szliwowski & Goldman, 1998), this maturation seems to be gradual, thus precluding the possibility of abrupt alteration in the amplitude of the ERN and FRN over the short term. Additionally, longitudinal studies have also demonstrated that most traits accounting for emotional, interpersonal, and This research was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation awarded to S.J.S. We thank James Desjardins and Chris- tina Foster for their help with data collection and reduction. Address reprint requests to: Dr. Sidney J. Segalowitz, Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. E-mail: sid.segalowitz@brocku.ca Psychophysiology, 47 (2010), 260–270. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Printed in the USA. Copyright r 2009 Society for Psychophysiological Research DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00942.x 260