Encoding of sensory prediction errors in the human cerebellum.

Authors

John Schlerf, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute
Richard B Ivry, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720
Jörn Diedrichsen, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom, and Wolfson Center for Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience, Bangor University, Gwynedd LL57 2AS, United Kingdom

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-4-2012

Journal

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience

Volume

32

Issue

14

First Page

4913

Last Page

4922

URL with Digital Object Identifier

10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4504-11.2012

Abstract

A central tenet of motor neuroscience is that the cerebellum learns from sensory prediction errors. Surprisingly, neuroimaging studies have not revealed definitive signatures of error processing in the cerebellum. Furthermore, neurophysiologic studies suggest an asymmetry, such that the cerebellum may encode errors arising from unexpected sensory events, but not errors reflecting the omission of expected stimuli. We conducted an imaging study to compare the cerebellar response to these two types of errors. Participants made fast out-and-back reaching movements, aiming either for an object that delivered a force pulse if intersected or for a gap between two objects, either of which delivered a force pulse if intersected. Errors (missing the target) could therefore be signaled either through the presence or absence of a force pulse. In an initial analysis, the cerebellar BOLD response was smaller on trials with errors compared with trials without errors. However, we also observed an error-related decrease in heart rate. After correcting for variation in heart rate, increased activation during error trials was observed in the hand area of lobules V and VI. This effect was similar for the two error types. The results provide evidence for the encoding of errors resulting from either the unexpected presence or unexpected absence of sensory stimulation in the human cerebellum.