Anatomical Coupling between Distinct Metacognitive Systems for Memory and Visual Perception

Abstract

A recent study found that, across individuals, gray matter volume in the frontal polar region was correlated with visual metacognition capacity (i.e., how well one’s confidence ratings distinguish between correct and incorrect judgments). A question arises as to whether the putative metacognitive mechanisms in this region are also used in other metacognitive tasks involving, for example, memory. A novel psychophysical measure allowed us to assess metacognitive efficiency separately in a visual and a memory task, while taking variations in basic task performance capacity into account. We found that, across individuals, metacognitive efficiencies positively correlated between the two tasks. However, voxel-based morphometry analysis revealed distinct brain structures for the two kinds of metacognition. Replicating a previous finding, variation in visual metacognitive efficiency was correlated with volume of frontal polar regions. However, variation in memory metacognitive efficiency was correlated with volume of the precuneus. There was also a weak correlation between visual metacognitive efficiency and precuneus volume, which may account for the behavioral correlation between visual and memory metacognition (i.e., the precuneus may contain common mechanisms for both types of metacognition). However, we also found that gray matter volumes of the frontal polar and precuneus regions themselves correlated across individuals, and a formal model comparison analysis suggested that this structural covariation was sufficient to account for the behavioral correlation of metacognition in the two tasks. These results highlight the importance of the precuneus in higher-order memory processing and suggest that there may be functionally distinct metacognitive systems in the human brain.

Regional White Matter Variation Associated with Domain-specific Metacognitive Accuracy

“…Recent research has exploited individual differences in metacognitive accuracy in healthy individuals as one approach to elucidating the neural mechanisms underlying the capacity to accurately reflect on particular cognitive processes (Baird, Smallwood, Gorgolewski, & Margulies, 2013;McCurdy et al, 2013;Fleming, Weil, Nagy, Dolan, & Rees, 2010). These studies converge with prior work in documenting a primary role of pFC in metacognition, particularly the anterior pFC (aPFC; see , for a review).…”

Changes in ventromedial prefrontal and insular cortex support the development of metamemory from childhood into adolescence

“…Thus, for all subsequent analyses, we collapsed across conditions and examined the development of metamemory monitoring across the entire task to increase the reliability of our index of metamemory monitoring (9).…”

“…Of note, a few studies in adults found that the APFC was related to the monitoring of perceptual, but not memory, decisions (e.g., ref. 9). An important question for future research is how cortical changes in frontal subregions contribute to metacognitive development in other domains.…”

“…An important question for future research is how cortical changes in frontal subregions contribute to metacognitive development in other domains. Areas in the posterior parietal lobes have also been implicated in metacognition (9,26) and could be investigated in the future. Additional exploratory ROI and whole-brain analyses indicated that these regions were not related to metamemory improvement in the present study (SI Results).…”

“…A high-resolution, whole-brain, magnetizationprepared rapid gradient-echo scan was acquired (SI Materials and Methods), and reconstruction was performed using Freesurfer 5.3 following standard procedures (36). Cortical thickness was extracted from the following ROIs based on the Destrieux atlas (37): vmPFC, defined as the orbital gyrus, orbital sulcus, and gyrus rectus; insula, defined as the anterior insula sulcus and short insular gyrus; APFC, defined as the middle frontal sulcus containing a majority of the coordinates reported in association with metacognitive ability in adults (9,18); and dACC, corresponding to the middle anterior cingulate gyrus and sulcus.…”