Preserved Metacognition for Undetected Visuomotor Deviations.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Human Motor Control

Background:

• Humans often correct movement errors without conscious awareness.
• This raises questions about the limits of conscious action monitoring and its impact on metacognition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether limited awareness of movement deviations impairs metacognitive confidence.
• To explore the neural mechanisms underlying confidence judgments during visuomotor tasks.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to record brain activity in 31 participants.
• Participants performed a visuomotor reaching task, detecting cursor deviations and rating confidence retrospectively.

Main Results:

• Participants monitored peak cursor error for deviation detection and confidence adjustment, even when unaware of deviations.
• Confidence ratings were equally metacognitively efficient for both aware and unaware deviations.
• Ventral striatum activity correlated with high confidence, while a broader network encoded cursor error.

Conclusions:

• Metacognitive monitoring of movement deviations can occur without conscious perception.
• This challenges the idea of severely limited conscious action monitoring.
• Findings reveal mechanisms for metacognition in visuomotor control and its neural correlates.