State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
PLoS Biol. 2018 Apr 23;16(4):e2004037. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2004037. eCollection 2018 Apr.
Decision-making is usually accompanied by metacognition, through which a decision maker monitors uncertainty regarding a decision and may then consequently revise the decision. These metacognitive processes can occur prior to or in the absence of feedback. However, the neural mechanisms of metacognition remain controversial. One theory proposes an independent neural system for metacognition in the prefrontal cortex (PFC); the other, that metacognitive processes coincide and overlap with the systems used for the decision-making process per se. In this study, we devised a novel "decision-redecision" paradigm to investigate the neural metacognitive processes involved in redecision as compared to the initial decision-making process. The participants underwent a perceptual decision-making task and a rule-based decision-making task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that the anterior PFC, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and lateral frontopolar cortex (lFPC), were more extensively activated after the initial decision. The dACC activity in redecision positively scaled with decision uncertainty and correlated with individual metacognitive uncertainty monitoring abilities-commonly occurring in both tasks-indicating that the dACC was specifically involved in decision uncertainty monitoring. In contrast, the lFPC activity seen in redecision processing was scaled with decision uncertainty reduction and correlated with individual accuracy changes-positively in the rule-based decision-making task and negatively in the perceptual decision-making task. Our results show that the lFPC was specifically involved in metacognitive control of decision adjustment and was subject to different control demands of the tasks. Therefore, our findings support that a separate neural system in the PFC is essentially involved in metacognition and further, that functions of the PFC in metacognition are dissociable.
决策通常伴随着元认知,决策者通过元认知监测对决策的不确定性,并据此修正决策。这些元认知过程可以在没有反馈的情况下发生,也可以在反馈之前发生。然而,元认知的神经机制仍存在争议。一种理论提出,前额叶皮层(PFC)中有一个独立的元认知神经系统;另一种理论则认为,元认知过程与本身的决策过程所使用的系统相重合和重叠。在这项研究中,我们设计了一种新的“决策-再决策”范式,以研究再决策时涉及的神经元认知过程与初始决策过程相比有何不同。参与者在功能磁共振成像(fMRI)期间进行了感知决策任务和基于规则的决策任务。我们发现,初始决策后,前扣带皮层(dACC)和外侧额极皮层(lFPC)等前脑岛区域的活动更加广泛。再决策中的 dACC 活动与决策不确定性呈正相关,并与个体元认知不确定性监测能力相关联——这种能力在两个任务中都普遍存在,表明 dACC 特别参与了决策不确定性监测。相比之下,再决策处理中观察到的 lFPC 活动与决策不确定性的减少成正比,并与个体准确性的变化相关联——在基于规则的决策任务中呈正相关,在感知决策任务中呈负相关。我们的研究结果表明,lFPC 特别参与了决策调整的元认知控制,并且受到任务不同控制需求的影响。因此,我们的发现支持了 PFC 中存在一个独立的神经系统,本质上参与了元认知,并且 PFC 在元认知中的功能是可分离的。
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