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Metacognitive awareness of difficulty in action selection: the role of the cingulo-opercular network

Martyn Teuchies, Kobe Desender, Wouter de Baene, Jelle Demanet, Marcel Brass
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/641340
Martyn Teuchies
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
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  • For correspondence: m.teuchies@ufl.edu
Kobe Desender
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
2Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
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Wouter de Baene
3Department of Cognitive Neuropsychology, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
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Jelle Demanet
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
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Marcel Brass
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
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Abstract

The question whether and how we are able to monitor our own cognitive states (metacognition) has been a matter of debate for decades. Do we have direct access to our cognitive processes or can we only infer them indirectly based on their consequences? In the current study, we wanted to investigate the brain circuits that underlie the metacognitive experience of fluency in action selection. To manipulate action-selection fluency we used a subliminal response priming paradigm. On each trial, participants additionally engaged in the metacognitive process of rating how hard they felt it was to respond to the target stimulus. Despite having no conscious awareness of the prime, results showed that participants rated incompatible trials (during which subliminal primes interfered with the required response) to be more difficult than compatible trials (where primes facilitated the required response) reflecting metacognitive awareness of difficulty. This increased sense of subjective difficulty was mirrored by increased activity in the rostral cingulate zone (RCZ) and the anterior insula, two regions that are functionally closely connected. Importantly, these reflected unique activations and were not explained by reaction times or prime-response compatibility. We interpret these findings in light of a possible grounding of the metacognitive judgement of fluency in action selection in interoceptive signals resulting from increased effort.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 17, 2019.
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Metacognitive awareness of difficulty in action selection: the role of the cingulo-opercular network
Martyn Teuchies, Kobe Desender, Wouter de Baene, Jelle Demanet, Marcel Brass
bioRxiv 641340; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/641340
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Metacognitive awareness of difficulty in action selection: the role of the cingulo-opercular network
Martyn Teuchies, Kobe Desender, Wouter de Baene, Jelle Demanet, Marcel Brass
bioRxiv 641340; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/641340

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