Prefrontal contributions to metacognition in perceptual decision-making

By Stephen M. Fleming, J. Huijgen, R. J. Dolan. 2012

360 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Neuroscience has made considerable progress in understanding the neural substrates supporting cognitive performance in a number of domains, including memory, perception, and decision making. In contrast, how the human brain generates metacognitive awareness of task performance remains unclear. Here, we address this question by asking participants to perform perceptual decisions while providing concurrent metacognitive reports during fMRI scanning. We show that activity in right rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (rlPFC) satisfies three constraints for a role in metacognitive aspects of decision-making. Right rlPFC showed greater activity during self-report compared to a matched control condition, activity in this region correlated with reported confidence, and the strength of the relationship between activity and confidence predicted metacognitive ability across individuals. In addition, functional connectivity between right rlPFC and both contralateral PFC and visual cortex increased during metacognitive reports. We discuss these findings in a theoretical framework where rlPFC re-represents object-level decision uncertainty to facilitate metacognitive report.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Metacognition (2014, background): “The current understanding of OFC suggests that it is mainly involved in outcome prediction [108, 109, 111].”
The expected value of control: An integrative theory of anterior cingulate cortex function (2013, neutral): “…et al., 2011); the accumulation of evidence over the course of making a decision (e.g., Gluth et al., 2012; Landmann et al., 2007); or the requirement for internally generated responses versus externally cued/ guided ones (e.g., Fleming et al., 2012; Shima and Tanji, 1998; Walton et al., 2004).”
Self-Evaluation of Decision-Making: A General Bayesian Framework for Metacognitive Computation (2017, background): “…evidence supports its role in human metacognition (Baird, Smallwood, Gorgolewski, & Margulies, 2013; De Martino et al., 2013; Del Cul et al., 2009; Fleming et al., 2010, 2012; 2014; Hilgenstock et al., 2014; Mc-Curdy et al., 2013; Miele, Wager, Mitchell, & Metcalfe, 2011; Yokoyama et al., 2010).”
The neural basis of metacognitive ability (2012, methodology): “To address this question, we asked subjects to carry out a near-threshold perceptual judgement task in the fMRI scanner [109].”