Relating introspective accuracy to individual differences in brain structure.
The ability to introspect about self-performance is key to human subjective experience, but the neuroanatomical basis of this ability is unknown. Such accurate introspection requires discriminating correct decisions from incorrect ones, a capacity that varies substantially across individuals. We dissociated variation in introspective ability from objective performance in a simple perceptual-decision task, allowing us to determine whether this interindividual variability was associated with a distinct neural basis. We show that introspective ability is correlated with gray matter volume in the anterior prefrontal cortex, a region that shows marked evolutionary development in humans. Moreover, interindividual variation in introspective ability is also correlated with white-matter microstructure connected with this area of the prefrontal cortex. Our findings point to a focal neuroanatomical substrate for introspective ability, a substrate distinct from that supporting primary perception.
Fleming
Stephen M
SM
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. s.fleming@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
Weil
Rimona S
RS
Nagy
Zoltan
Z
Dolan
Raymond J
RJ
Rees
Geraint
G
D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003071:Cognition; D003337:Corpus Callosum / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology; D012372:ROC Curve; D013850:Thinking; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult