SynthesisNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2022
Meta-analysis of human prediction error for incentives, perception, cognition, and action.
Synthesis in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 76 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
76 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Comprehensive investigation of predictive processing: A cross- and within-cognitive domains fMRI meta-analytic approach.Human brain mapping · 2024Pooled it
- Prior Expectations of Volatility Following Psychotherapy for Delusions: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2025Trial
- Ghrelin decreases sensitivity to negative feedback and increases prediction-error related caudate activity in humans, a randomized controlled trial.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- Prediction and Prediction Error in Autism: A Meta-Analysis of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Results.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Distinct neural responses to punishment anticipation in violent and non-violent individuals with schizophrenia.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- Age and loneliness relate to reduced trust learning and alterations in amygdala function.iScience · 2026Article
- Electrophysiological dissociation of human posterior cingulate cortex contributions to value- and memory-based decision-making.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Is the bad apple or the bad basket to be blamed? Neural substrate of self-interest and conformity motivation during the contagion of dishonesty.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Article
- Signaling of salience and prediction errors by anterior insula neurons.Biochemical and biophysical research communications · 2026Article
- Competing value signals impair reward-learning via dopaminergic mechanisms and increase exploration.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Personalized feedback about immunity corrects risk misestimation and motivates vaccination.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Striatal Prediction Error Tracking Moderates the Influence of Social Exposure on Adolescent Substance Use Curiosity.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- A Theoretical Framework for Studying the Phenomenon of Gaslighting.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2026Review
- Altered amygdala and striatal responsivity and prediction error encoding of temporal reward dynamics in post-trauma psychopathology.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Punishments Enhance Reward Learning by Modulating Striatal Prediction Errors.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- α -tACS Modulates Reward-Dependent Pupil Responses and Corticostriatal Connectivity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Functional bipartition of medial prefrontal cortex into salience detection and movement gain.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Mechanisms of entanglement: how a gendered world makes a gendered brain.Biology of sex differences · 2026Review
- Resilience through regulation: Individual differences in inhibitory control shape neural and psychological responses to ostracism.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
16 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
Abstract
Prediction errors (PEs) are a keystone for computational neuroscience. Their association with midbrain neural firing has been confirmed across species and has inspired the construction of artificial intelligence that can outperform humans. However, there is still much to learn. Here, we leverage the wealth of human PE data acquired in the functional neuroimaging setting in service of a deeper understanding, using an MKDA (multi-level kernel-based density) meta-analysis. Studies were identified with Google Scholar, and we included studies with healthy adult participants that reported activation coordinates corresponding to PEs published between 1999-2018. Across 264 PE studies that have focused on reward, punishment, action, cognition, and perception, consistent with domain-general theoretical models of prediction error we found midbrain PE signals during cognitive and reward learning tasks, and an insula PE signal for perceptual, social, cognitive, and reward prediction errors. There was evidence for domain-specific error signals--in the visual hierarchy during visual perception, and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex during social inference. We assessed bias following prior neuroimaging meta-analyses and used family-wise error correction for multiple comparisons. This organization of computation by region will be invaluable in building and testing mechanistic models of cognitive function and dysfunction in machines, humans, and other animals. Limitations include small sample sizes and ROI masking in some included studies, which we addressed by weighting each study by sample size, and directly comparing whole brain vs. ROI-based results.
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.