The ERN belongs to a family of ERP components that are characterized by a distinct medial-frontal negativity (FCz maximum), including CRN (e.g., Vidal et al., 2000) and the feedback-related negativity (FRN; e.g., Donkers et al., 2005; Hajcak et al., 2006), which is not directly linked to a response. Interestingly, Morris et al. (2008) reported reduced amplitudes of both ERN and feedback negativity (FBN) in schizophrenia. Using temporal CSD-PCA methodology, we have repeatedly observed a CSD component exhibiting high topographic similarity with this group of ERP components. Its underlying neuronal generator pattern consisted of a focal mid-frontal sink (Fz−) accompanied by bilateral centroparietal sources (CP+) and was evident in healthy adults during stimulus-locked auditory oddball ERPs, partially overlapping but distinct from a classical late P3b, and peaking at or around the time when subjects pressed a response button or silently updated a target count (Kayser and Tenke, 2006a, 2006b; Tenke et al., 1998, 2008). This highly-distinct sink-source pattern was also present for response-locked ERPs of correct trials recorded during auditory and visual recognition memory tasks (Kayser et al., 2007), revealing inverse
