Fleming Stephen M, Ryu Jihye, Golfinos John G, Blackmon Karen E
1 Centre for Neural Science, New York University, USA 2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK
1 Centre for Neural Science, New York University, USA 3 Department of Psychology, City University of New York, USA.
Brain. 2014 Oct;137(Pt 10):2811-22. doi: 10.1093/brain/awu221. Epub 2014 Aug 6.
Humans have the capacity to evaluate the success of cognitive processes, known as metacognition. Convergent evidence supports a role for anterior prefrontal cortex in metacognitive judgements of perceptual processes. However, it is unknown whether metacognition is a global phenomenon, with anterior prefrontal cortex supporting metacognition across domains, or whether it relies on domain-specific neural substrates. To address this question, we measured metacognitive accuracy in patients with lesions to anterior prefrontal cortex (n = 7) in two distinct domains, perception and memory, by assessing the correspondence between objective performance and subjective ratings of performance. Despite performing equivalently to a comparison group with temporal lobe lesions (n = 11) and healthy controls (n = 19), patients with lesions to the anterior prefrontal cortex showed a selective deficit in perceptual metacognitive accuracy (meta-d'/d', 95% confidence interval 0.28-0.64). Crucially, however, the anterior prefrontal cortex lesion group's metacognitive accuracy on an equivalent memory task remained unimpaired (meta-d'/d', 95% confidence interval 0.78-1.29). Metacognitive accuracy in the temporal lobe group was intact in both domains. Our results support a causal role for anterior prefrontal cortex in perceptual metacognition, and indicate that the neural architecture of metacognition, while often considered global and domain-general, comprises domain-specific components that may be differentially affected by neurological insult.
人类有能力评估认知过程的成败,这被称为元认知。越来越多的证据支持前额叶前部皮质在感知过程的元认知判断中发挥作用。然而,尚不清楚元认知是一种全局性现象,即前额叶前部皮质支持跨领域的元认知,还是它依赖于特定领域的神经基质。为了解决这个问题,我们通过评估客观表现与主观表现评分之间的对应关系,测量了前额叶前部皮质受损患者(n = 7)在感知和记忆这两个不同领域的元认知准确性。尽管前额叶前部皮质受损患者的表现与颞叶受损的对照组(n = 11)和健康对照组(n = 19)相当,但他们在感知元认知准确性方面存在选择性缺陷(元d'/d',95%置信区间0.28 - 0.64)。然而,至关重要的是,前额叶前部皮质损伤组在同等记忆任务上的元认知准确性并未受损(元d'/d',95%置信区间0.78 - 1.29)。颞叶组在两个领域的元认知准确性均保持完好。我们的结果支持前额叶前部皮质在感知元认知中起因果作用,并表明元认知的神经结构虽然通常被认为是全局性和领域通用的,但包含可能受到神经损伤不同影响的特定领域成分。