Competitive Frontoparietal Interactions Mediate Implicit Inferences

Abstract

Frequent experience with regularities in our environment allows us to use predictive information to guide our decision process. However, contingencies in our environment are not always explicitly present and sometimes need to be inferred. Heretofore, it remained unknown how predictive information guides decision-making when explicit knowledge is absent and how the brain shapes such implicit inferences. In the present experiment, 17 human participants (9 females) performed a discrimination task in which a target stimulus was preceded by a predictive cue. Critically, participants had no explicit knowledge that some of the cues signaled an upcoming target, allowing us to investigate how implicit inferences emerge and guide decision-making. Despite unawareness of the cue-target contingencies, participants were able to use implicit information to improve performance. Concurrent EEG recordings demonstrate that implicit inferences rely upon interactions between internally and externally oriented networks, whereby prefrontal regions inhibit parietal cortex under internal implicit control.

Action information contributes to metacognitive decision-making

“…In addition, to adequately compute an estimate about the quality of a decision it is necessary to know the broader task context or infer "the state of the world" (i.e., value for an action at a certain state of the (task) environment) at the moment of the decision [94][95][96][97] . Recently, the orbitofrontal cortex has been linked to inferring such "states of the world" during decision-making 95,98 . As such, central frontal regions and anterior frontal areas could play distinct roles in metacognitive decision-making 71 .…”

Action information contributes to metacognitive decision-making

“…In addition, to adequately compute an estimate about the quality of a decision it is necessary to know the broader task context or infer "the state of the world" (i.e., value for an action at a certain state of the (task) environment) at the moment of the decision (Wilson et al 2014;Schuck et al 2018;Schuck et al 2016;Wokke et al 2016). Recently, the orbitofrontal cortex has been linked to inferring such "states of the world" during decision-making (Schuck et al 2018;Wokke and Ro 2019). As such, central frontal regions and anterior frontal areas could play distinct roles in metacognitive decision-making (see also Shekhar and Rahnev 2018).…”

The Set of Priors Related Concepts Instrumental in Understanding Conscious Perception Begs Clarification

“…Let me first provide briefly the published research background for the problem. Prior information processed before an actual stimulus-event has been shown to influence whether and how this stimulus event will be explicitly perceived (Friston, 2005;Hohwy, 2013;Auksztulewicz et al, 2018;Chao et al, 2018;de Lange et al, 2018;Keller and Mrsic-Flogel, 2018;Andersen et al, 2019;Berggren and Eimer, 2019;Crawford et al, 2019;Gandolfo and Downing, 2019;Hutchinson and Barrett, 2019;Lumaca et al, 2019;Meijs et al, 2019;Pennartz et al, 2019;Stefanics et al, 2019;Whyte, 2019;Wokke and Ro, 2019;Wolfe, 2019). The effects span across facilitation, inhibition, illusory distortion, and hallucination (Buschman and Miller, 2007;Aru and Bachmann, 2017a;Powers et al, 2017;Aru et al, 2018;Brascamp et al, 2018;Corlett et al, 2018;Flounders et al, 2019;Harrison and Rideaux, 2019;Hullfish et al, 2019;Tappin and Gadsby, 2019;Tulver et al, 2019;Valton et al, 2019;Varrier et al, 2019).…”