Neural mechanisms of active and observational feedback learning in humans

Christian Bellebaum
Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf

Successful adaptation to the environment requires the continuous monitoring of one’s own 
responses in terms of desirable and non-desirable outcomes. The dopaminergic system has 
been shown to play an important role both in monitoring behaviour and its consequences and 
in adapting behaviour to changing environments. In interaction with the striatum and the 
anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the dopaminergic midbrain is the key structure of the so-
called “reward system”, that is, a system of neural structures involved in the processing of 
primary and secondary rewards and in linking behaviour and feedback. In the first part of the 
talk I will present findings regarding the mechanisms involved in feedback processing. A 
focus will be on psychophysiological studies assessing the “Feedback-related Negativity” 
(FRN), an ACC-driven event-related potential component, which has been suggested to 
reflect a reward prediction error. In the second part of my talk I will focus on observational 
learning from feedback, in which a more indirect association between behaviour and 
feedback is learned. I will present psychophysiological and neuroimaging evidence as well as 
evidence from a study with Parkinson’s Disease patients on similarities and differences 
between neural mechanisms in active and observational learning from feedback and discuss 
the differences in terms of the integration of action representations with feedback.