Poster No:
61
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Joshua Sabio1, Timothy Ballard1, Hannah Filmer1, Paul Dux1
Institutions:
1The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland
First Author:
Joshua Sabio
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, Queensland
Co-Author(s):
Paul Dux
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, Queensland
Introduction:
A fundamental tradeoff exists between speed and accuracy when performing a decision (speed-accuracy tradeoff, SAT). Metacognition allows for the adjustment, monitoring, and evaluation of one's own decisions and strategies. While these aspects of cognition are central to human behavioural performance, their respective causal neural underpinnings are not well understood. Here, we used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to investigate the causal roles of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), superior medial frontal cortex (SMFC), and posterior parietal cortex (PPC) in the SAT and metacognition.
Methods:
Subjects received active or sham tDCS before completing a perceptual task with explicit SAT cues and reported confidence in their decisions. We fit the linear ballistic accumulator model to behavioural data to extract latent decision variables and used confidence judgments to compute meta-d' and m-ratio.
Results:
Stimulation influenced performance on the perceptual task but not metacognition. Specifically, PFC stimulation reduced subjects' response caution, especially when accuracy was emphasised; SMFC stimulation decreased response caution and increased the discriminability between choices; and PPC stimulation increased both response caution and discriminability.
Conclusions:
These results show that the nature of the impact of tDCS on the SAT over the frontoparietal network, previously implicated in flexible cognitive control, critically depends on the region stimulated. In addition, metacognition was not impacted by tDCS, highlighting a potential dissociation between the neural processes implicated in object-level and meta-level behaviour. In sum, our findings provide further evidence that tDCS can alter decision making and strategic processes in the human brain.
Brain Stimulation:
TDCS 1
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Decision Making 2
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Bayesian Modeling
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Perception: Visual
Keywords:
Cognition
Cortex
Meta-Cognition
Modeling
Neurological
Other - tDCS, decision making
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.
Other
Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
Healthy subjects
Was this research conducted in the United States?
No
Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
NOTE: Any human subjects studies without IRB approval will be automatically rejected.
Yes
Were any animal research approved by the relevant IACUC or other animal research panel?
NOTE: Any animal studies without IACUC approval will be automatically rejected.
No
Please indicate which methods were used in your research:
Behavior
Computational modeling
Other, Please specify
-
tDCS
Provide references using APA citation style.
Not applicable
No