Theme 2: Perception, Action and Control

Performance Monitoring

Donders-ACTION-CONTROL-screen thema 2 Our overarching research goal is to understand the implementation of flexible, adaptive, and goal-directed behavior in the human brain. We focus particularly on monitoring of action and action outcomes, error detection and behavioral adjustments as a consequence of performance/goal discrepancies. To this end, we employ a broad spectrum of research methods both in healthy subjects as well as neurological, neurosurgical and psychiatric patients.

We pursue a multimodal, convergent-methods approach ranging from behavioral measures via electroencephalography, intracranial recordings, functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging, psychopharmacological challenges to imaging genetics. The main research lines comprise

(a) the functional neuroanatomy of the performance monitoring system,
(b) adaptive and maladaptive changes in behavior and brain activity resulting from or leading to performance problems, respectively,
(c) the use of feedback information for value-based decision making,
(d) the neurochemical and genetic underpinnings of performance monitoring, and
(e) the pathology of performance monitoring in neurological and psychiatric diseases as well as its modulation by therapeutic intervention.

Contact
Name:	Markus Ullsperger
Telephone:	024-3612545
Email:	m.ullsperger@donders.ru.nl
Fax:	024-3616066
Visiting address:	Donders Centre for Cognition Montessorilaan 3 6525 HR Nijmegen The Netherlands
Postal address:	Donders Centre for Cognition P.O. Box 9104 6500 HE Nijmegen The Netherlands

Key grants and prizes

Research grant (PI) provided by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Tiltle: “How do brain regions work together to produce adaptive behavior?” (2012)

Research grant (PI) provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG) Title: “Genome-wide association study with electrophysiological correlates of performance monitoring" (2010)

Research grant (PI) provided by theGerman Research Foundation (DFG). Title:"Error detection in Parkinson'sdisease" in the clinical research unit "Basal ganglia - cortex loops: mechanismsof pathological interaction and therapeutic modulation" (KFO 219, Cologne;2012)

Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychophysiology (Society for Psychophysiological Research, 2008)

Key publications

Wessel J, Danielmeier C, Morton JB, Ullsperger M (2012) Surprise and error: Common neuronal architecture for the processing of errors and novelty. The Journal of Neuroscience, 32:7528-37

Danielmeier C, Eichele T, Forstmann BU, Tittgemeyer M, Ullsperger M (2011) Posterior medial frontal cortex activity predicts post-error adaptations in task-related visual and motor areas. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31:1780-1789

Eichele T, Debener S, Calhoun VD, Specht K, Engel AK, Hugdahl K, von Cramon DY, Ullsperger M (2008) Prediction of human errors by maladaptive changes in event-related brain networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105:6173-6178

Klein TA, Neumann J, Reuter M, Hennig J, von Cramon DY, Ullsperger M (2007) Genetically determined differences in learning from errors. Science 318:1642-1645

Ullsperger M, Debener S (Eds) (2010) Simultaneous EEG and fMRI: recording, analysis and application. Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press

Links

Webpage Prof. Dr. Markus Ullsperger

Back to:
Research Theme 2:
Perception, Action and Decision-making

Research Group
Performance Monitoring

Principal Investigator
Prof. M. Ullsperger

Group members

Postdocs
Dr. Claudia Danielmeier
Dr. Dilene van Campen

PhD's
Dr. Egbert Hartstra
Jil Humann