Human VMPFC encodes early signatures of confidence in perceptual decisions
Abstract
Choice confidence, an individual's internal estimate of judgment accuracy, plays a critical role in adaptive behaviour, yet its neural representations during decision formation remain underexplored. Here, we recorded simultaneous EEG-fMRI while participants performed a direction discrimination task and rated their confidence on each trial. Using multivariate single-trial discriminant analysis of the EEG, we identified a stimulus-independent component encoding confidence, which appeared prior to subjects' choice and explicit confidence report, and was consistent with a confidence measure predicted by an accumulation-to-bound model of decision-making. Importantly, trial-to-trial variability in this electrophysiologically-derived confidence signal was uniquely associated with fMRI responses in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), a region not typically associated with confidence for perceptual decisions. Furthermore, activity in the VMPFC was functionally coupled with regions of the frontal cortex linked to perceptual decision-making and metacognition. Our results suggest the VMPFC holds an early confidence representation arising from decision dynamics, preceding and potentially informing metacognitive evaluation.
Data availability
The data and code required to reproduce the main and supplementary figures have been uploaded to Dryad. The full EEG-fMRI dataset will be freely available upon publication at: https://openneuro.org/datasets/ds001512.
-
Data from: Human VMPFC encodes early signatures of confidence in perceptual decisionsAvailable at Dryad Digital Repository under a CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Economic and Social Research Council (ES/L012995/1)
- Marios Philiastides
British Academy (SG121587)
- Marios Philiastides
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Tobias H Donner, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
Ethics
Human subjects: The study was approved by the College of Science and Engineering Ethics Committee at the University of Glasgow (CSE01355) and informed consent, and consent to publish, was obtained from all participants.
Version history
- Received: May 29, 2018
- Accepted: September 20, 2018
- Accepted Manuscript published: September 24, 2018 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: October 23, 2018 (version 2)
- Version of Record updated: November 9, 2018 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2018, Gherman & Philiastides
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.
Metrics
-
- 3,819
- views
-
- 494
- downloads
-
- 61
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
Dopamine axons are the only axons known to grow during adolescence. Here, using rodent models, we examined how two proteins, Netrin-1 and its receptor, UNC5C, guide dopamine axons toward the prefrontal cortex and shape behaviour. We demonstrate in mice (Mus musculus) that dopamine axons reach the cortex through a transient gradient of Netrin-1-expressing cells – disrupting this gradient reroutes axons away from their target. Using a seasonal model (Siberian hamsters; Phodopus sungorus) we find that mesocortical dopamine development can be regulated by a natural environmental cue (daylength) in a sexually dimorphic manner – delayed in males, but advanced in females. The timings of dopamine axon growth and UNC5C expression are always phase-locked. Adolescence is an ill-defined, transitional period; we pinpoint neurodevelopmental markers underlying this period.
-
- Neuroscience
Acetylcholine is released in visual cortex by axonal projections from the basal forebrain. The signals conveyed by these projections and their computational significance are still unclear. Using two-photon calcium imaging in behaving mice, we show that basal forebrain cholinergic axons in the mouse visual cortex provide a binary locomotion state signal. In these axons, we found no evidence of responses to visual stimuli or visuomotor prediction errors. While optogenetic activation of cholinergic axons in visual cortex in isolation did not drive local neuronal activity, when paired with visuomotor stimuli, it resulted in layer-specific increases of neuronal activity. Responses in layer 5 neurons to both top-down and bottom-up inputs were increased in amplitude and decreased in latency, whereas those in layer 2/3 neurons remained unchanged. Using opto- and chemogenetic manipulations of cholinergic activity, we found acetylcholine to underlie the locomotion-associated decorrelation of activity between neurons in both layer 2/3 and layer 5. Our results suggest that acetylcholine augments the responsiveness of layer 5 neurons to inputs from outside of the local network, possibly enabling faster switching between internal representations during locomotion.