Neural Bases of Unconscious Error Detection in a Chinese Anagram Solution Task: Evidence from ERP Study

In everyday life, error monitoring and processing are important for improving ongoing performance in response to a changing environment. However, detecting an error is not always a conscious process. The temporal activation patterns of brain areas related to cognitive control in the absence of conscious awareness of an error remain unknown. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) in the brain were used to explore the neural bases of unconscious error detection when subjects solved a Chinese anagram task. Our ERP data showed that the unconscious error detection (UED) response elicited a more negative ERP component (N2) than did no error (NE) and detect error (DE) responses in the 300–400-ms time window, and the DE elicited a greater late positive component (LPC) than did the UED and NE in the 900–1200-ms time window after the onset of the anagram stimuli. Taken together with the results of dipole source analysis, the N2 (anterior cingulate cortex) might reflect unconscious/automatic conflict monitoring, and the LPC (superior/medial frontal gyrus) might reflect conscious error recognition.