Behavioral And Neural Basis Of Specialized Metacognition In Memory And Perception

Metacognition,is an ability of self-monitoring,evaluation and introspection.It is a direct embodiment of self-consciousness.Ample evidence indicated that metacognition in the human primates is highly dissociable from cognition and is potentially specialized across domains.However,such metacognitive sophistication is highly under-studied in monkeys in both behavioral and neural level.At the behavioral level,macaque have demonstrated the metacognitive ability,but it will be containmented by various confounding variable.The specialization and specificity of metacognition in animals is even an uncharted area.At the neural level,there are also bottlenecks in the neural basis of metacognitive ability due to the limitation of research method in human subjects.Apart from that,most of the current animal metacognitive paradigms adopting the binary report,so it is impossible to study its quantitative metacognitive ability,thus the metacognitive ability of macaque and human has never been compared under the same scale sience most human study using continuous report.More importantly,most animal metacognition-related studies focus on the expression of metacognitive self-confidence,and have not been studied under the theoretical model of metacognition,so the animal metacognitive research also lacks a reasonable model framework.In this paper,we sort out to exam the domain-specificity in anmals and the similarity between human and macaque in a computing model(hierarchical Bayesian meta-d' and meta-d' under the signal detection theory model).We also explored the brain basis and neuroplasticity of metacognition with the longitudinal MRI structural imaging.At last,the causal effects of prefrontal cortex(orbital frontal cortex and dorsolateral cortex)on macaque metaperception and metamemory were explored by lesion and neuroregulation(inhibitory monopulse transcranial magnetic stimulation).The main results are listed as follow:First,we acquired the quantitative continusous confidence expression in nonehuman primate with temporal wagering paradigm for the first time.We also confirmed the ture introspection and domain-specific metacognition exist in macaque monkeys with a signal detection theory and hierarchical bayesian framework.Apart from that,we discovered the difference between human and macaque monkeys in terms of metacognitive ability.We additionally,acquired the MRI structural images of monkeys before and after the metacognitive and cognitive training.Further single-subject VBM analysis indicated the subcorticial structure of prefrontal cortex have evident morphological changes after the metacognitive training.Second,based on the morphological changes and the domain-specificity demonstrated by macaque monkeys,we separately verified the critical role of prefrontal cortex in metamemory and metaperception with causal approach(TMS and lesion).And we discovered such deficit only exhibit in metacognition but not cognition following causal modulation(separation of cognition and metacognition).Third,we found the process of metacognitive information have separatable stages by deploying single pulse TMS on 46d(subcoritical structure in dl PFC)in different metacognitive processing stages.Also,we pinpointed the critical timepoint of metaperceptual calculation is before the decision but not the after.Forth,we further explored the more specific and specializated structure supporting metamemory with a temporal/spatial variant delay matching to position task.We found the lesion to the prefrontal cortex only impairs the spatial variant memory but not the temporal variant memory(separation of spatiality and temporality in metamemory domain).For the first time,we obersved such specificity and refinement in metacognitive ability.This paper established that macaques have highly specific and specialized humanlike metacognitive ability with three kinds of separation(the separation of meta perception and meta memory,the separation of metacognition and cognition and separation of spatiality and temporality in metamemory domain).And,established the crtical founctional role of dorsolateral prefrontal lobe in both metamemory and metaperception.