The Frontal pole (FPC) has been studied by a neurophysiological point of view at the level of individual neurons in the macaque only in an earlier study. In my earlier study, I showed that FPC does not contribute to functions such as prospective memory or the implementation of rules but it instead could play a role in metacognition. However, the experimental design was not appropriate to test specifically a role in metacognition in a controlled manner. In this project, the goal is to study the neural basis of the meta-cognitive processes by recording individual neurons in macaque in a task in which the animal is trained to perform a perceptual task of varying difficulty in which increasing difficulties are associated with decreasing confidence levels about the correctness of their choice.
In this task at the end of the perceptual decision the animal is asked to bet in the bet stage making a second decision, by deciding based on the confidence level of his previous perceptual decision, whether its choice is correct or not choosing between two options "high bet" and "low bet", depending on whether the level of confidence about the correctness is high or low. The analysis of the neural activity associated with the perceptual information represented as a function of the two types of choice allows evaluating the role of the region in metacognition. Using the same task even in the observation condition where the macaque observes another human agent in the execution of the task also allows studying the role of FPC in monitoring others' decisions. This task by offering to the macaque the possibility to intervene in some trials in the bet stage of the human trials in place of the humans makes it possible to get a control on the effective monitoring realized by monkey on another agent's decision.
The value of this project is represented by the importance of understanding the mechanisms of metacognition at the neural level. Why is so important? For Nelson and Narren (1990). metacognition is simultaneously a topic of interest in its own right and a bridge between areas, e.g., between decision-making and memory, between learning and motivation, and between learning and cognitive development.
However, more simply the answer is that metacognition is a central question to humans. Metacognition has interested thinkers for hundreds of years because self-reflective knowledge was thought to be central to the kind of consciousness unique to humans. The notion that there could be an observer that is able to look at other cognitive processes is such a compelling idea that has brought philosophers such as Augustine and Descartes to believe that it exists a disembodied soul. For not dualists this kind of consciousness should have raised in the evolution offering an adaptive advantage allowing the possibility to do new things such as to reflect on our own actions and their outcome of to modify them accordingly.
Being able to assess the events in our mind and reflecting on past outcomes could generate an adaptive advantage by freeing animals from the bonds of perceived stimuli in their environment in order to achieve decisions that are more rational. The definition of metacognition has requested the distinction of metacognition from other forms of monitoring and control performed by the brain.
For some levels, in fact, the whole brain can be thought of as a feedback system with nearly all the pathways equipped not only feedforward routes, but for feedback connections to allow each area to process the results of others. Nor it is simply the ability to make a discrimination or judgment on the stimuli immediately available through the senses into the world.
Metacognition is a special kind of judgment in which a cognitive process or a performance is monitored at a higher level, the metacognitive level (Narens and Nelson, 1994). Both symbols and the memory can be regarded as a representation because they are internal and not present in the world, so when we make a judgment on memory, this can be considered metacognitive. If a person expresses an opinion on what he is seeing or hearing is not a meta-representation because it is not a judgment of a representation.
I propose to use a metacognitive task with a betting stage because several experiments have shown that this paradigm might to be more appropriate than others to test metacognition for example when compared to paradigms with escape response (Shields et al. 1997) in which the animals can choose an escape button to give up the test under high uncertainty. These escape tasks share the limitation that the target associated with the escape option become just a label for a third category and that the stimuli to which the animals respond are present in the environment and are not memories. However, because they might have the advantage to shorten the animal training period the possibility to change approach with escape tasks will not be completely ruled out.
The Metacognitive ability is also of neuropsycological and neurological interest. It has been shown in the literature that may be impaired, for example in patients with a traumatic injury to the frontal cortex in which individuals show deficits in the knowledge of alteration of their cognition and personality (Schmitz, 2006). Other studies using a repetitive TMS to inactivate dorsolateral prefrontal cortex have also selectively produced a metacognitive deterioration maintaining preserved the performance in a perceptual task (Rounis et al. 2010).
Bibliography
Nelson TO & Narens L (1990). Metamemory: A theoretical framework and new findings.
In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 1:45). New York: emic Press.
Rounis E et al. (2010). Cogn Neurosci. 1:165-75.
Schmitz TW (2006). Neuropsychologia. 44:762-73.
Shields WE (1997). J Exp Psychol Gen. 126:147-64.