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Sketchpad Series

Brain-wide neural correlates of post-error slowing

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Gergo Gomori¹ (gomorigergo91@gmail.com), Aditya Gilra², Robert Schmidt¹; ¹Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, ²National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

When performing a sequence of familiar tasks, an unexpected mistake often triggers a more cautious approach in the subsequent movement, a behavior known as post-error slowing. This study investigates the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon using data from the International Brain Laboratory. In each experimental session, mice performed trials of a perceptual decision-making task, turning a steering wheel to indicate the location of a visual stimulus. Behavioral data and brain-wide in vivo electrophysiological recordings were collected throughout all sessions. To mitigate confounding effects of varying trial conditions, we first constructed regression models to predict reaction times, which helped isolate trials that exhibited genuine post-error slowing. Subsequently, we trained classifiers on neural activity from diverse brain regions during the decision-making window to distinguish post-error slowing trials from others. This allowed us to rank regions based on their discrimination performance. Our analysis revealed that while a small subset of brain regions consistently encoded post-error slowing, many regions displayed occasional involvement. Notably, post-error slowing was primarily associated with subcortical regions, with cortical areas playing a more limited role. Extending the analysis to the pre-stimulus period, we found that some regions retained a memory of the previous error to influence subsequent decisions, whereas others exhibited distinct activity only during the decision-making process. These findings highlight the distributed and dynamic nature of neural processes underlying post-error slowing, with subcortical regions taking a central role. Ongoing work seeks to further elucidate these dynamics, formalizing how this cognitive process arises from region-specific neural activity and influences decision-making.

Topic Area: THINKING: Decision making