ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2013
The feedback-related negativity signals salience prediction errors, not reward prediction errors.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 81 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
81 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Neurophysiological Correlates of Near-Wins in Gambling: A Systematic Literature Review.Journal of gambling studies · 2025Pooled it
- Frontal midline theta reflects anxiety and cognitive control: meta-analytic evidence.Journal of physiology, ParisPooled it
- Coercive and legitimate authority impact tax honesty: evidence from behavioral and ERP experiments.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2017Trial
- Trial
- The Reward Positivity Tracks Positive Reward Prediction Errors From Feedback to Cues During Reinforcement Learning.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Sensitivity to negative-feedback processing in people with Parkinson's disease and impulsive-compulsive behaviours.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2026Article
- Modulation of feedback-related negativity by objective and subjective response correctness.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Age differences in socio-emotional feedback processing during learning: an ERP study.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neurocognitive mechanisms of source credibility: how work experience and patient ratings modulate the processing of medical veracity cues.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Anticipation of pain during operant learning increases cognitive performance and feedback-related cortical potentials.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- Dissecting how psychopathic traits are linked to learning in different contexts: A multilevel computational and electrophysiological approach.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Prediction Error-Related Memory Enhancement Depends on the Neural State Surrounding the Prediction Error Event.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Altered Reward Processing in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Insights From Active and Observational Learning.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Posttraumatic reexperiencing and alcohol use: Mediofrontal theta as a neural mechanism for negative reinforcement.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2025Article
- Exploring when to exploit: the cognitive underpinnings of foraging-type decisions in relation to psychopathy.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Early Salience Signals Predict Interindividual Asymmetry in Decision Accuracy Across Rewarding and Punishing Contexts.Human brain mapping · 2024Article
- Neural dynamics underlying the illusion of control during reward processing.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Reinforcement learning and the reward positivity with aversive outcomes.Psychophysiology · 2024Article
- Prefrontal signals precede striatal signals for biased credit assignment in motivational learning biases.Nature communications · 2024Article
- An electrophysiological and behavioral investigation of feedback-based learning in aphasia.Aphasiology · 2024Article
21 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Modulations of the feedback-related negativity (FRN) event-related potential (ERP) have been suggested as a potential biomarker in psychopathology. A dominant theory about this signal contends that it reflects the operation of the neural system underlying reinforcement learning in humans. The theory suggests that this frontocentral negative deflection in the ERP 230-270 ms after the delivery of a probabilistic reward expresses a prediction error signal derived from midbrain dopaminergic projections to the anterior cingulate cortex. We tested this theory by investigating whether FRN will also be observed for an inherently aversive outcome: physical pain. In another session, the outcome was monetary reward instead of pain. As predicted, unexpected reward omissions (a negative reward prediction error) yielded a more negative deflection relative to unexpected reward delivery. Surprisingly, unexpected pain omission (a positive reward prediction error) also yielded a negative deflection relative to unexpected pain delivery. Our data challenge the theory by showing that the FRN expresses aversive prediction errors with the same sign as reward prediction errors. Both FRNs were spatiotemporally and functionally equivalent. We suggest that FRN expresses salience prediction errors rather than reward prediction errors.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.