Neural evidence accumulation persists after choice to inform metacognitive judgments

Abstract

The ability to revise one's certainty or confidence in a preceding choice is a critical feature of adaptive decision-making but the neural mechanisms underpinning this metacognitive process have yet to be characterized. In the present study, we demonstrate that the same build-to-threshold decision variable signal that triggers an initial choice continues to evolve after commitment, and determines the timing and accuracy of self-initiated error detection reports by selectively representing accumulated evidence that the preceding choice was incorrect. We also show that a peri-choice signal generated in medial frontal cortex provides a source of input to this post-decision accumulation process, indicating that metacognitive judgments are not solely based on the accumulation of feedforward sensory evidence. These findings impart novel insights into the generative mechanisms of metacognition.

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Author details

  1. Peter R Murphy

    Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
    For correspondence
    murphyp7@tcd.ie
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Ian H Robertson

    Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Siobhán Harty

    Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Redmond G O'Connell

    Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Ethics

Human subjects: We state in our manuscript (p.19):"[Subjects] provided written informed consent, and all procedures were approved by the Trinity College Dublin ethics committee and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Copyright

© 2015, Murphy et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Peter R Murphy
  2. Ian H Robertson
  3. Siobhán Harty
  4. Redmond G O'Connell
(2015)
Neural evidence accumulation persists after choice to inform metacognitive judgments
eLife 4:e11946.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11946

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11946