Neural evidence accumulation persists after choice to inform metacognitive judgments

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Cite this article as: eLife 2015;4:e11946 doi: 10.7554/eLife.11946

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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

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.
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.
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.
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.

Reviewing Editor

Michael J Frank, Brown University, United States

Publication history

Received: September 29, 2015
Accepted: December 17, 2015
Accepted Manuscript published: December 19, 2015 (version 1)
Version of Record published: January 28, 2016 (version 2)

Copyright

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.