Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
Science. 2010 Sep 17;329(5998):1541-3. doi: 10.1126/science.1191883.
The ability to introspect about self-performance is key to human subjective experience, but the neuroanatomical basis of this ability is unknown. Such accurate introspection requires discriminating correct decisions from incorrect ones, a capacity that varies substantially across individuals. We dissociated variation in introspective ability from objective performance in a simple perceptual-decision task, allowing us to determine whether this interindividual variability was associated with a distinct neural basis. We show that introspective ability is correlated with gray matter volume in the anterior prefrontal cortex, a region that shows marked evolutionary development in humans. Moreover, interindividual variation in introspective ability is also correlated with white-matter microstructure connected with this area of the prefrontal cortex. Our findings point to a focal neuroanatomical substrate for introspective ability, a substrate distinct from that supporting primary perception.
自我表现的内省能力是人类主观体验的关键，但这种能力的神经解剖基础尚不清楚。这种准确的内省需要将正确的决策与错误的决策区分开来，而这种能力在个体之间有很大的差异。我们在一个简单的感知决策任务中，将内省能力的变化与客观表现区分开来，从而确定这种个体间的可变性是否与一个独特的神经基础有关。我们发现，内省能力与前额叶皮质前部的灰质体积有关，在人类中，这一区域的进化发展非常明显。此外，内省能力的个体间差异也与与前额叶皮质这一区域相连的白质微观结构有关。我们的发现指向了内省能力的一个特定的神经解剖学基础，这个基础与支持主要感知的基础不同。
