Action Monitoring and Medial Frontal Cortex: Leading Role of Supplementary Motor Area.

The capacity to evaluate the outcomes of our actions is fundamental for adapting and optimizing behavior and depends on an action-monitoring system that assesses ongoing actions and detects errors. The neuronal network underlying this executive function, classically attributed to the rostral cingulate zone, is poorly characterized in humans, owing to the limited number of direct neurophysiological data. Using intracerebral recordings, we show that the leading rote is played by the supplementary motor area (SMA), which rapidly evaluates successful and erroneous actions. The rostral part of media[ prefrontal cortex, driven by the SMA, was activated tater and exclusively in the case of errors. This suggests a hierarchical organization of the different frontal regions involved in implementation of action monitoring and error processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]