EEG correlates of error-related activity during ballistic computer mouse movements

It has been repeatedly shown that processing of perceived errors in the human brain may elicit some type of evoked response in EEG collectively termed as error-related potentials (ErrP). The study of ErrP signatures offers a potential back door to better understanding how the brain encodes and reacts to errors and a useful tool for poking adaptation and learning, but also has several practical applications in brain-computer interface (BCI) and general human-computer interaction (HCI). The bulk of this literature has focused on so-called ``interaction'' ErrP, reflecting the response to discrete events occurring during self-paced, casual interaction of a subject with their environment. Here we present a two-case study investigating the existence and characteristics of ErrP EEG correlates in an eye-hand coordination task consisting in ``ballistic'' computer mouse movements, where the action and reaction time constraints imposed on the subject are extremely tight. We show that clear EEG substrates of error processing can be retrieved for both subjects and bare strong similarities with the interaction ErrP waveforms. The findings of this work suggest the possibility of detecting, in real-time, errors committed during fast-paced interaction, thus potentially enabling automatic ErrP-based error correction in real-world BCI and HCI scenarios.