Identification and disruption of a neural mechanism for accumulating prospective metacognitive information prior to decision-making

Abstract

Summary More than one type of probability must be considered when making decisions. It is as necessary to know one’s chance of performing choices correctly as it is to know the chances that desired outcomes will follow choices. We refer to these two choice contingencies as internal and external probability. Neural activity across many frontal and parietal areas reflected internal and external probabilities in a similar manner during decision-making. However, neural recording and manipulation approaches suggest that one area, the anterior lateral prefrontal cortex (alPFC), is highly specialized for making prospective, metacognitive judgments on the basis of internal probability; it is essential for knowing which decisions to tackle, given its assessment of how well they will be performed. Its activity predicted prospective metacognitive judgments, and individual variation in activity predicted individual variation in metacognitive judgments. Its disruption altered metacognitive judgments, leading participants to tackle perceptual decisions they were likely to fail.

Medial and orbital frontal cortex in decision-making and flexible behavior

“…Therefore, animals lacking a PFC and relying on older neural circuits may learn based on this global signal as opposed to on the basis of fine-grained and specific choice-outcome contingencies, such as primates with lesions in 47/12o. In humans, adjacent but even more lateral prefrontal cortical regions mediate other related cognitive processes, for example, prospective metacognitive estimation of the impact that choices will have even before they are taken (Miyamoto et al, 2021).…”

Causal manipulation of self-other mergence in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex

“…cTBS is an offline brain stimulation protocol that decreases cortical excitability of the targeted region for several minutes after application (Huang et al, 2005). cTBS has been used not only to modulate cortical excitability in motor areas but also in brain areas relevant for social cognition (Hill et al, 2017) and metacognition (Miyamoto et al, 2021). A group of participants underwent a shortened version of the experiment in the MRI scanner, preceded by cTBS (cTBS condition).…”

Confidence guides priority between forthcoming tasks

“…We know of the key roles of both medial prefrontal cortex 5 and ventral striatum 6 in forming global confidence estimates from repeated experience with a task. We also know that the anterolateral prefrontal cortex is crucial when comparing prospective confidence in two tasks in order to engage in the task associated with highest anticipated confidence 53 . A logical continuation would be to extend these investigations to the case of prioritization between two tasks, both of which have to be done.…”