ACC – Monitoring Mistakes

The brain region that does everything – kind of?

The Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) has been ascribed multiple functions including monitoring of mistakes – but it seems to be involved in an awful lot. Just what does it do?

In 2008 a scientific article was published that proclaimed, “The Cingulate Cortex Does Everything”. The article was not serious, it was a spoof by a group of scientists who were reacting to the fact that so many published articles around that period seemed to attribute a function to the Cingulate Cortex. So much so that it seemed that the Cingulate Cortex was indeed involved in anything and everything the brain does – hence they named it the “Cingularity”.