Predictions shape confidence in right inferior frontal gyrus

AbstractIt is clear that prior expectations shape perceptual decision-making, yet their contribution to the construction of subjective decision confidence remains largely unexplored. We recorded fMRI data while participants made perceptual decisions and confidence judgements, controlling for potential confounds of attention. Results show that subjective confidence increases as perceptual prior expectations increasingly support the decision, and that this relationship is associated with BOLD activity in right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG). Specifically, rIFG is sensitive to the discrepancy between expectation and decision (mismatch), and, crucially, higher mismatch responses are associated with lower decision confidence. Connectivity analyses revealed the source of the expectancy information to be bilateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the source of sensory signals to be intracalcarine sulcus. Altogether, our results indicate that predictive information is integrated into subjective confidence in rIFG, and reveal an occipital-frontal network that constructs confidence from top-down and bottom-up signals. This interpretation was further supported by exploratory findings that the white matter density of intracalcarine sulcus and OFC negatively predicted their respective contributions to the construction of confidence. Our findings advance our understanding of the neural basis of subjective perceptual processes by revealing an occipito-frontal functional network that integrates prior beliefs into the construction of confidence.

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Superior colliculus neuronal ensemble activity signals optimal rather than subjective confidence

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1711628115 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 115 (7) ◽

pp. E1588-E1597 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

Brian Odegaard ◽

Piercesare Grimaldi ◽

Seong Hah Cho ◽

Megan A. K. Peters ◽

Hakwan Lau ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Superior Colliculus ◽

Critical Role ◽

Perceptual Decision Making ◽

Decision Accuracy ◽

Perceptual Decision ◽

Decision Confidence ◽

Brain Signals ◽

Subjective Confidence ◽

The Brain

Recent studies suggest that neurons in sensorimotor circuits involved in perceptual decision-making also play a role in decision confidence. In these studies, confidence is often considered to be an optimal readout of the probability that a decision is correct. However, the information leading to decision accuracy and the report of confidence often covaried, leaving open the possibility that there are actually two dissociable signal types in the brain: signals that correlate with decision accuracy (optimal confidence) and signals that correlate with subjects’ behavioral reports of confidence (subjective confidence). We recorded neuronal activity from a sensorimotor decision area, the superior colliculus (SC) of monkeys, while they performed two different tasks. In our first task, decision accuracy and confidence covaried, as in previous studies. In our second task, we implemented a motion discrimination task with stimuli that were matched for decision accuracy but produced different levels of confidence, as reflected by behavioral reports. We used a multivariate decoder to predict monkeys’ choices from neuronal population activity. As in previous studies on perceptual decision-making mechanisms, we found that neuronal decoding performance increased as decision accuracy increased. However, when decision accuracy was matched, performance of the decoder was similar between high and low subjective confidence conditions. These results show that the SC likely signals optimal decision confidence similar to previously reported cortical mechanisms, but is unlikely to play a critical role in subjective confidence. The results also motivate future investigations to determine where in the brain signals related to subjective confidence reside.

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Superior Colliculus Neuronal Ensemble Activity Signals Optimal Rather Than Subjective Confidence

10.1101/157123 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Brian Odegaard ◽

Piercesare Grimaldi ◽

Seong Hah Cho ◽

Megan A.K. Peters ◽

Hakwan Lau ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Superior Colliculus ◽

Discrimination Task ◽

Perceptual Decision Making ◽

Decision Accuracy ◽

Perceptual Decision ◽

Decision Confidence ◽

Brain Signals ◽

Subjective Confidence ◽

The Brain

AbstractRecent studies suggest that neurons in sensorimotor circuits involved in perceptual decision-making also play a role in decision confidence. In these studies, confidence is often considered to be an optimal readout of the probability that a decision is correct. However, the information leading to decision accuracy and the report of confidence often co-varied, leaving open the possibility that there are actually two dissociable signal types in the brain: signals that correlate with decision accuracy (optimal confidence) and signals that correlate with subjects’ behavioral reports of confidence (subjective confidence). We recorded neuronal activity from a sensorimotor decision area, the superior colliculus (SC) of monkeys, while they performed two different tasks. In our first task, decision accuracy and confidence co-varied, as in previous studies. In our second task, we implemented a novel motion discrimination task with stimuli that were matched for decision accuracy but produced different levels of confidence as reflected by behavioral reports. We used a multivariate decoder to predict monkeys’ choices from neuronal population activity. As in previous studies on perceptual decision-making mechanisms, we found that neuronal decoding performance increased as decision accuracy increased. However, when decision accuracy was matched, performance of the decoder was similar between high and low subjective confidence conditions. These results show that the SC likely signals optimal decision confidence similar to previously reported cortical mechanisms, but is unlikely to play a critical role in subjective confidence. The results also motivate future investigations to determine where in the brain signals related to subjective confidence reside.Significance StatementConfidence is thought to reflect the rational or optimal belief concerning one’s choice accuracy. Here, we introduce a novel version of the dot-motion discrimination task with stimulus conditions that produce similar accuracy but different subjective behavioral reports of confidence. We decoded decision performance of this task from neuronal signals in the superior colliculus (SC), a subcortical region involved in decision-making. We found that SC activity signaled a perceptual decision for visual stimuli, with the strength of this activity reflecting decision accuracy, but not the subjective level of confidence as reflected by behavioral reports. These results demonstrate an important role for the SC in perceptual decision-making and challenge current ideas about how to measure subjective confidence in monkeys and humans.

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Functional Anatomy of Intensity Aspects of Attention

Zeitschrift für Neuropsychologie ◽

10.1024/1016-264x.14.3.181 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 181-190 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Walter Sturm

Keyword(s):

Right Hemisphere ◽

Functional Anatomy ◽

Fmri Data ◽

Functional Networks ◽

Top Down ◽

Stimulus Modality ◽

Spatial Orienting ◽

Phasic Alertness ◽

Co Activation ◽

Attention System

Abstract: Behavioral and PET/fMRI-data are presented to delineate the functional networks subserving alertness, sustained attention, and vigilance as different aspects of attention intensity. The data suggest that a mostly right-hemisphere frontal, parietal, thalamic, and brainstem network plays an important role in the regulation of attention intensity, irrespective of stimulus modality. Under conditions of phasic alertness there is less right frontal activation reflecting a diminished need for top-down regulation with phasic extrinsic stimulation. Furthermore, a high overlap between the functional networks for alerting and spatial orienting of attention is demonstrated. These findings support the hypothesis of a co-activation of the posterior attention system involved in spatial orienting by the anterior alerting network. Possible implications of these findings for the therapy of neglect are proposed.

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The role of decision confidence in advice-taking and trust formation

10.31234/osf.io/sjgf7 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Niccolo Pescetelli ◽

Nick Yeung

Keyword(s):

Social Contexts ◽

Reliability Estimation ◽

Perceptual Decision Making ◽

Agent Based ◽

Individual Level ◽

Decision Confidence ◽

Objective Standard ◽

Trust Formation ◽

Objective Feedback ◽

Confidence Calibration

In a world where ideas flow freely between people across multiple platforms, we often find ourselves relying on others' information without an objective standard to judge whether those opinions are accurate. The present study tests an agreement-in-confidence hypothesis of advice perception, which holds that internal metacognitive evaluations of decision confidence play an important functional role---namely being a learning signal that allows to learn about the reliability of others in the absence of feedback--- in the perception and use of social information, such as peers' advice. We propose that confidence can be used, computationally, to estimate advisors' trustworthiness and advice reliability. Specifically, these processes are hypothesized to be particularly important in situations where objective feedback is absent or difficult to acquire. Here, we use a judge-advisor system paradigm to precisely manipulate the profiles of virtual advisors whose opinions are provided to participants performing a perceptual decision making task. We find that when advisors' and participants' judgments are independent, people are able to discriminate subtle advice features, like confidence calibration, whether or not objective feedback is available. However, when observers' judgments (and judgment errors) are correlated---as is the case in many social contexts---predictable distortions can be observed between feedback and feedback-free scenarios. A simple model of advice reliability estimation, endowed with metacognitive insight, is able to explain key patterns of results observed in the human data. Finally, we use agent-based modeling to explore implications of these individual-level decision strategies for network-level patterns of trust and belief formation.

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Confidence boosts serial dependence in orientation estimation

10.1101/369140 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Jason Samaha ◽

Missy Switzky ◽

Bradley R. Postle

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Task Performance ◽

Signal Quality ◽

Serial Dependence ◽

Perceptual Decision Making ◽

Subjective Estimate ◽

Subjective Confidence ◽

Internal Signal ◽

Normative Models ◽

Subjective Estimates

AbstractIn the absence of external feedback, a decision maker must rely on a subjective estimate of their decision accuracy in order to appropriately guide behavior. Normative models of perceptual decision making relate subjective estimates of internal signal quality (e.g. confidence) directly to the internal signal quality itself, thereby making it unknowable whether the subjective estimate or the underlying signal is what drives behavior. We constructed stimuli that dissociated human observer’s performance on a visual estimation task from their subjective estimates of confidence in their performance, thus violating normative principles. To understand whether confidence influences future decision making, we examined serial dependence in observer’s responses, a phenomenon whereby the estimate of a stimulus on the current trial can be biased towards the stimulus from the previous trial. We found that when decisions were made with high confidence, they conferred stronger biases upon the following trial, suggesting that confidence may enhance serial dependence. Critically, this finding was true also when confidence was experimentally dissociated from task performance, indicating that subjective confidence, independent of signal quality, can amplify serial dependence. These findings demonstrate an effect of confidence on future behavior, independent of task performance, and suggest that perceptual decisions incorporate recent history in an uncertainty-weighted manner, but where the uncertainty carried forward is a subjectively estimated and possibly suboptimal readout of objective sensory uncertainty.

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Memory Effects of Speech and Gesture Binding: Cortical and Hippocampal Activation in Relation to Subsequent Memory Performance

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2009.21053 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 821-836 ◽

Cited By ~ 53

Author(s):

Benjamin Straube ◽

Antonia Green ◽

Susanne Weis ◽

Anjan Chatterjee ◽

Tilo Kircher

Keyword(s):

Visual Information ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽

Premotor Cortex ◽

Recognition Task ◽

Semantic Integration ◽

Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽

Neural Basis ◽

Fmri Session ◽

Abstract Content

In human face-to-face communication, the content of speech is often illustrated by coverbal gestures. Behavioral evidence suggests that gestures provide advantages in the comprehension and memory of speech. Yet, how the human brain integrates abstract auditory and visual information into a common representation is not known. Our study investigates the neural basis of memory for bimodal speech and gesture representations. In this fMRI study, 12 participants were presented with video clips showing an actor performing meaningful metaphoric gestures (MG), unrelated, free gestures (FG), and no arm and hand movements (NG) accompanying sentences with an abstract content. After the fMRI session, the participants performed a recognition task. Behaviorally, the participants showed the highest hit rate for sentences accompanied by meaningful metaphoric gestures. Despite comparable old/new discrimination performances (d′) for the three conditions, we obtained distinct memory-related left-hemispheric activations in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the premotor cortex (BA 6), and the middle temporal gyrus (MTG), as well as significant correlations between hippocampal activation and memory performance in the metaphoric gesture condition. In contrast, unrelated speech and gesture information (FG) was processed in areas of the left occipito-temporal and cerebellar region and the right IFG just like the no-gesture condition (NG). We propose that the specific left-lateralized activation pattern for the metaphoric speech–gesture sentences reflects semantic integration of speech and gestures. These results provide novel evidence about the neural integration of abstract speech and gestures as it contributes to subsequent memory performance.

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Multisensory objects and the orienting of spatial attention

Seeing and Perceiving ◽

10.1163/187847612x647090 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 25 (0) ◽

pp. 90

Author(s):

Serena Mastroberardino ◽

Valerio Santangelo ◽

Emiliano Macaluso

Keyword(s):

Spatial Attention ◽

Functional Imaging ◽

Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽

Frontal Eye Fields ◽

Imaging Data ◽

Top Down ◽

Task Constraints ◽

Task Requirements ◽

Visual Element ◽

Task Irrelevant

The presentation of an auditory stimulus semantically-congruent with a visual element of a multi-objects display can enhance processing of that element. Here we used multisensory objects (MO) as non-informative cues in a spatial cueing paradigm, aiming to directly assess the interplay between MO integration and spatial attention. We presented two pictures (e.g., left — dog, right — cat) plus a central sound (e.g., a dog’s bark) that defined the location of the MO (left, in this example). This was followed by a target (a Gabor patch) either at the MO location or in the opposite hemifield. Subjects discriminated the orientation of the Gabor, while ignoring all task-irrelevant pictures and sounds. Further, we manipulated the task requirements including ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ discrimination (Gabor tilt = ±5° or ±10°), and by presenting either a single unilateral Gabor (Exp. 1, ‘low’ competition) or two Gabors bilaterally (red and blue, with the target now defined by colour; Exp. 2, ‘high’ competition). Functional imaging data revealed activation of frontal regions when the target was presented on the opposite side of the MO (invalid trials). The frontal eye-fields activated irrespective of task requirements, while the inferior frontal gyrus activated only when the MO-cue was invalid and competition was low (Exp. 1 only). These findings show that MOs automatically affect the distribution of spatial attention, and that re-orienting operations on invalid trials activate dorsal and ventral frontal areas depending on top-down task constraints. Overall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis linking the integration of multisensory objects with biases of spatial attention.

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Catecholamine Modulation of Evidence Accumulation during Perceptual Decision Formation: A Randomized Trial

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01393 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 31 (7) ◽

pp. 1044-1053 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Gerard M. Loughnane ◽

Méadhbh B. Brosnan ◽

Jessica J. M. Barnes ◽

Angela Dean ◽

Sanjay L. Nandam ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Behavioral Effect ◽

Oddball Paradigm ◽

Perceptual Decision Making ◽

Neural Basis ◽

Perceptual Decision ◽

Evidence Accumulation ◽

Double Blinded ◽

The Impact ◽

Catecholamine Levels

Recent behavioral modeling and pupillometry studies suggest that neuromodulatory arousal systems play a role in regulating decision formation but neurophysiological support for these observations is lacking. We employed a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover design to probe the impact of pharmacological enhancement of catecholamine levels on perceptual decision-making. Catecholamine levels were manipulated using the clinically relevant drugs methylphenidate and atomoxetine, and their effects were compared with those of citalopram and placebo. Participants performed a classic EEG oddball paradigm that elicits the P3b, a centro-parietal potential that has been shown to trace evidence accumulation, under each of the four drug conditions. We found that methylphenidate and atomoxetine administration shortened RTs to the oddball targets. The neural basis of this behavioral effect was an earlier P3b peak latency, driven specifically by an increase in its buildup rate without any change in its time of onset or peak amplitude. This study provides neurophysiological evidence for the catecholaminergic enhancement of a discrete aspect of human decision-making, that is, evidence accumulation. Our results also support theoretical accounts suggesting that catecholamines may enhance cognition via increases in neural gain.

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Neural Correlates of Theory of Mind Are Preserved in Young Women With Anorexia Nervosa

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2020.568073 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

Author(s):

Monica Leslie ◽

Daniel Halls ◽

Jenni Leppanen ◽

Felicity Sedgewick ◽

Katherine Smith ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Anorexia Nervosa ◽

Prefrontal Cortex ◽

Theory Of Mind ◽

Social Interactions ◽

Young Women ◽

Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽

Reliability And Validity ◽

Neural Correlates ◽

Neural Activation ◽

Neural Basis

People with anorexia nervosa (AN) commonly exhibit social difficulties, which may be related to problems with understanding the perspectives of others, commonly known as Theory of Mind (ToM) processing. However, there is a dearth of literature investigating the neural basis of these differences in ToM and at what age they emerge. This study aimed to test for differences in the neural correlates of ToM processes in young women with AN, and young women weight-restored (WR) from AN, as compared to healthy control participants (HC). Based on previous findings in AN, we hypothesized that young women with current or prior AN, as compared to HCs, would exhibit a reduced neural response in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the inferior frontal gyrus, and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) whilst completing a ToM task. We recruited 73 young women with AN, 45 WR young women, and 70 young women without a history of AN to take part in the current study. Whilst undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan, participants completed the Frith-Happé task, which is a commonly used measure of ToM with demonstrated reliability and validity in adult populations. In this task, participants viewed the movements of triangles, which depicted either action movements, simple interactions, or complex social interactions. Viewing trials with more complex social interactions in the Frith-Happé task was associated with increased brain activation in regions including the right TPJ, the bilateral mPFC, the cerebellum, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. There were no group differences in neural activation in response to the ToM contrast. Overall, these results suggest that the neural basis of spontaneous mentalizing is preserved in most young women with AN.

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