Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
Commun Biol. 2020 Jul 9;3(1):360. doi: 10.1038/s42003-020-1049-3.
Metacognitive awareness-the ability to know that one is having a particular experience-is thought to guide optimal behavior, but its neural bases continue to be the subject of vigorous debate. Prior work has identified correlations between perceptual metacognitive ability and the structure and function of lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC); however, evidence for a causal role of this region in promoting metacognition is controversial. Moreover, whether LPFC function promotes metacognitive awareness of perceptual and emotional features of complex, yet ubiquitous face stimuli is unknown. Here, using model-based analyses following a causal intervention to LPFC in humans, we demonstrate that LPFC function promotes metacognitive awareness of the orientation of faces-although not of their emotional expressions. Collectively, these data support the causal involvement of the prefrontal cortex in metacognitive awareness, and indicate that the role of LPFC in metacognition encompasses perceptual experiences of naturalistic social stimuli.
元认知意识——即知道自己正在经历某种特定体验的能力——被认为可以指导最佳行为，但它的神经基础仍在激烈争论中。先前的工作已经确定了感知元认知能力与外侧前额叶皮层（LPFC）的结构和功能之间的相关性；然而，该区域在促进元认知方面的因果作用的证据仍存在争议。此外，LPFC 的功能是否会促进对复杂但普遍存在的面部刺激的感知和情绪特征的元认知意识尚不清楚。在这里，我们使用基于模型的分析方法，对人类的 LPFC 进行了因果干预，结果表明 LPFC 的功能促进了对面部朝向的元认知意识——尽管不是对其情绪表达的元认知意识。总的来说，这些数据支持前额叶皮层在元认知意识中的因果关系，并且表明 LPFC 在元认知中的作用包括对自然社交刺激的感知体验。
