Relating introspective accuracy to individual differences in brain structure.

Journal article

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.

Authors: Fleming, S; Weil, R; Nagy, Z; Dolan, R; Rees, G

• Journal: Science (New York, N.Y.)
• Volume: 329
• Issue: 5998
• Pages: 1541-1543
• Publication date: 2010-09-01
• DOI: 10.1126/science.1191883
• EISSN: 1095-9203
• ISSN: 0036-8075
• Language: English
• Keywords: Humans; Thinking; Visual Perception; Corpus Callosum; Cognition; ROC Curve; Judgment; Male; Prefrontal Cortex; Adult; Young Adult; Decision Making; Brain Mapping