Metacognitive ability correlates with hippocampal and prefrontal microstructure

Allen, Micah; Glen, James C.; Müllensiefen, Daniel; Schwarzkopf, D. Samuel; Fardo, Francesca; Frank, Darya; Callaghan, Martina F.; Rees, Geraint

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.02.008

Cited by 79 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Previous studies have consistently shown that fMRI activity in rlPFC tracks explicit confidence estimates (11,(14)(15)(16), and that the microstructure of rlPFC can predict the degree to which an individual's subjective evaluations reflect objective performance (36)(37)(38). One hypothesis, which may reconcile these results with ours, is that rlPFC is not itself involved in computing a probability that a choice is correct, but instead governs the mapping of internal onto explicit confidence estimates.…”

Section: Cc-by-nc-nd 40 International License Not Peer-reviewed) Is supporting

confidence: 78%

Distinct encoding of decision confidence in human medial prefrontal cortex

Bang

Fleming

2018

Preprint

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Our confidence in a choice and the reliability of evidence pertaining to that choice appear to be inseparable quantities. However, recent computational frameworks suggest that the brain should encode distinct estimates of these quantities for adaptive behavioural control. Consider a line judge in a tennis match deciding whether a ball is out. When the ball is moving quickly, the sensory signal is unreliable. Nevertheless, if the ball lands far from the line, a decision may be easy and confidence high. Decision confidence should reflect the probability that a choice is correct and must therefore, unlike other estimates of certainty such as evidence reliability, be flexibly conditioned on a choice. Here we devised a psychophysical approach to decouple confidence in a sensory choice from the reliability of the sensory evidence upon which a choice is based. Using human fMRI, we observed that an area in medial prefrontal cortex (perigenual cingulate cortex, pgACC) tracked probability correct, the normative definition of decision confidence, whereas neural areas previously thought to track decision confidence, such as ventral striatum and posterior parietal cortex, instead tracked sensory reliability. We show that pgACC activity does not simply co-vary with objective performance but is also linked to withinsubject and between-subject variation in a subjective sense of decision confidence. Our study is consistent with the recent proposal that the brain separately maintains choice-dependent and choice-independent estimates of certainty, and sheds light on why dysfunctional confidence estimates often emerge following prefrontal lesions and/or degeneration.

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Section: Cc-by-nc-nd 40 International License Not Peer-reviewed) Is supporting

confidence: 78%

Distinct encoding of decision confidence in human medial prefrontal cortex

Bang

Fleming

2018

Preprint

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“…We omitted all trials from the first block to ensure staircase stabilisation, similar to previous studies (Fleming et al, 2010, 2012; Allen et al, 2017; Hauser et al, 2017). Trials with early (<100 ms), late (>1500 ms) or missing responses were excluded.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Noradrenaline blockade specifically enhances metacognitive performance

Hauser

Allen

Purg

et al. 2017

eLife

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Impairments in metacognition, the ability to accurately report one’s performance, are common in patients with psychiatric disorders, where a putative neuromodulatory dysregulation provides the rationale for pharmacological interventions. Previously, we have shown how unexpected arousal modulates metacognition (Allen et al., 2016). Here, we report a double-blind, placebo-controlled, study that examined specific effects of noradrenaline and dopamine on both metacognition and perceptual decision making. Signal theoretic analysis of a global motion discrimination task with adaptive performance staircasing revealed that noradrenergic blockade (40 mg propranolol) significantly increased metacognitive performance (type-II area under the curve, AUROC2), but had no impact on perceptual decision making performance. Blockade of dopamine D2/3 receptors (400 mg amisulpride) had no effect on either metacognition or perceptual decision making. Our study is the first to show a pharmacological enhancement of metacognitive performance, in the absence of any effect on perceptual decision making. This enhancement points to a regulatory role for noradrenergic neurotransmission in perceptual metacognition.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24901.001

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“…information coded in the dACC to the anterior PFC (Allen et al, 2017;Fleming et al, 2010Fleming et al, , 2014McCurdy et al, 2013), whereas accurate memorial metacognition is dependent on memory-mediated regions such as the medial PFC, mid/posterior cingulate cortex, inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and precuneus (Baird et al, 2013;Chua et al, 2006;McCurdy et al, 2013;Simons et al, 2010;Ye et al, 2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Diffusion property and functional connectivity of superior longitudinal fasciculus underpin human metacognition

Zheng

Wang

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Metacognition as the capacity of monitoring one's own cognition operates across domains.Here, we addressed whether metacognition in different cognitive domains rely on common or distinct neural substrates with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and inter-areal functional connectivity techniques. After acquiring DTI and resting-state fMRI data, we asked participants to perform a temporal-order memory judgement task and a perceptual discrimination task, followed by trial-specific confidence judgments. DTI analysis revealed that the structural integrity (fractional anisotropy) in the anterior portion of right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) was associated with both perceptual and mnemonic metacognitive abilities. When the mnemonic metacognitive ability was disrupted by TMS, the mnemonic metacognition scores did not correlate with SLF structural integrity anymore, revealing the causal relevance of this tract in memory metacognition. Furthermore, taking the dorsolateral PFC and IPL (both of which are connected by SLF) as seeds, we found perceptual and mnemonic metacognitive abilities to be associated with functional connectivity between DLPFC and VLPFC, whereas mnemonic metacognitive ability was selectively associated with connectivity between IPL and precuneus. These results illustrate the importance of SLF and a distinct white-matter grey-matter circuitry that supports human metacognition. Introduction:The capacity of reflecting on one's own cognitive process is known as metacognition (Flavell, 1979;Fleming and Dolan, 2012;Yeung and Summerfield, 2012). Metacognition has been considered as the most crucial function emerged during evolution (Hayes, 2016). Given its crucial functions, researchers have endeavored to understand how a metacognitive judgment is computed (Fleming and Daw, 2017;Kepecs et al., 2008;Zylberberg et al., 2016), how it is disrupted in psychiatric disorders (Hauser et al., 2017a;Rouault et al., 2018a), and how its accuracy can be improved (Carpenter et al., 2019). Metacognition is an umbrella term for the higher-level cognition about the lower-level cognition in various domains (e.g., perception and memory). As cognitive processes are implemented in the brain, an interesting and important question is whether the neural circuit supporting metacognition is the same or distinct across different cognitive domains.A large body of fMRI work have increasingly demonstrated a nuanced picture for this domaingenerality issue of metacognition. For example, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) might be involved in reading out the information of primary decision-making and using it for computing both perceptual and mnemonic metacognitive judgements (Chua and Ahmed, 2016;Fleming and Dolan, 2012;Kwok et al., 2019;Rounis et al., 2010). Morales et al. (2018) reported that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) was active during metacognitive evaluation in both memory and perception tasks but also found the activation patterns decoded from a perception task in the posterior medial frontal cortex and ven...

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Metacognitive ability correlates with hippocampal and prefrontal microstructure

Cited by 79 publications

References 72 publications

Distinct encoding of decision confidence in human medial prefrontal cortex

Distinct encoding of decision confidence in human medial prefrontal cortex

Noradrenaline blockade specifically enhances metacognitive performance

Diffusion property and functional connectivity of superior longitudinal fasciculus underpin human metacognition

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