Commentary: Sure I'm Sure: Prefrontal Oscillations Support Metacognitive Monitoring of Decision Making

Frontiers in Psychology

Hamid Ostad Rahimi¹ 

关键词: prefrontal cortex;    metacognition;    oscillations;    electroencephalography;    decision making;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02331

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Metacognition, as defined as monitoring and controlling of the decision-making process in the brain (Fleming and Dolan, 2012), plays a major role in adjustment of the ongoing behavior of a high order organism, most importantly in the mammalian brain. Metacognition helps to determine in a roadmap, next, and best moves in reaction to external stimuli when external feedback is not immediately available. Little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms of metacognition, and it remains controversial whether different neural circuits are involved in processing information used in first-order decisions vs. those in metacognitive ones. Some propose that similar brain process is engaged in both kinds of processes (Kiani and Shadlen, 2009). This hypothesis suggests that same information, regarding quality and quantity, contributes to form either a first order or a second order (metacognitive) decision, while distinct behaviors are suggestive of different underlying information sources (Cleeremans et al., 2007). En route to give a proper explanation for this theory, it has been proposed that various levels of available information lead to different decisions in first and second order decision making, by emphasizing the role of noise accrual and signal decay that occur within metacognitive system networks (Pleskac and Busemeyer, 2010). Trial-by-trial choosing tasks are widely used to mimic first-order decision making experiments and permit similar electrophysiological cortical oscillatory dynamics to be captured. By all above, it remains unclear how oscillations relate to second-order decision making. Recently, Wokke et al. (2016) suggested that a significant electrophysiological oscillatory change-in-pattern happens with metacognitive decision making. They demonstrated the idea that certain oscillatory pathways in the brain can reflect differences between first-order and metacognitive task performance.

【 授权许可】

CC BY