The Role of VMPC in Metamemorial Judgments of Content Retrievability

Abstract

Making judgments about the retrievability of information is a critical part of the metamemory processes engaged during remembering. A recent study of patients with frontal lesions suggests that ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPC) plays a critical role in such judgments [Schnyer, D. M., Verfaellie, M., Alexander, M. P., Lafleche, G., Nicholls, L., & Kaszniak, A. W. A role for right medial prefrontal cortex in accurate feeling of knowing judgments: Evidence from patients with lesions to frontal cortex. Neuropsychologia, 42, 957-966, 2004]. The observed impairment was thought to reflect an inability to determine the accessibility of memory contents. To further examine the neuroanatomical basis of content accessibility assessment, we used fMRI in an episodic feeling-of-knowing (FOK) paradigm. Participants were asked to make trial-by-trial predictions about the retrievability of the final word that completed studied sentences and then to select the correct completion from among alternatives. Results indicated that the VMPC is engaged during accurate FOK judgments and its activation is modulated by retrieval rating. Structural equations modeling supported the notion that VMPC, as part of a broader left hemisphere network involved in memory retrieval, monitors the output of the retrieval process. More generally, VMPC may participate in metacognitive processes that allow for the comparison of available data against an internal model.

The Neural Basis of Metacognitive Ability

“…VMPFC (peak Montreal Neurological Institute coordinate: 23, 30, 218) showed greater activity during accurate FOK judgements, and increased connectivity with medial temporal lobe memory structures in the FOK condition compared with a low-level control task [95]. Complementing this work, individual differences in metacognitive accuracy for prospective JOLs correlated with VMPFC activity (peak: 211, 42, 226) on Figure 3.…”

The worth of pictures: Using high density event-related potentials to understand the memorial power of pictures and the dynamics of recognition memory

“…Parietal activity will therefore be brief if the time required to achieve recollection is brief, and it will be long if the time required to achieve recollection is long. Although exactly what processes the parietal activity represents unknown, we speculate (along with others) that it may reflect the actual matching of representations stored in memory with perceptual representations (Addis et al, 2006;Schnyer et al, 2005;Wagner et al, 2005).…”

“…Similarly, Wheeler and Buckner (2003) reported strong left lateral parietal activation during perceived recognition. Using a feeling-of-knowing paradigm, Schnyer and colleagues (Schnyer et al, 2005) found activation for "know" judgments in a number of posterior regions including the inferior parietal lobe. These authors speculated that activity in these regions reflects the reactivation of the stored memory representation.…”

Metacognitive confidence: A neuroscience approach

“…In these studies, greater perceived future retrievability corresponds with activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and medial and lateral temporal cortex (Schnyer, Nicholls, & Verfaellie, 2005). Greater FOK reports also activate the bilateral inferior frontal gyri (IFG), left medial frontal gyrus (MFG), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and bilateral caudate nuclei at the time of the FOK ratings.…”