Distinct patterns of functional brains connectivity correlate with objective performance and subjective beliefs

PABLO BARTTFELD; BRUNO WICKER; PHIL MCALEER; PASCAL BELIN; YAN COJAN ; MARTÍN GRAZIANO; RAMÓN LEIGUARDA; MARIANO SIGMAN

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NATL ACAD SCIENCES

Año: 2013 vol. 110 p. 11577 - 11582

0027-8424

The degree of correspondence between objective performance and subjective beliefs varies widely across individuals. Here we demonstrate that functional brain network connectivity measured before exposure to a perceptual decision task covaries with individual objective (type-I performance) and subjective (type-II performance) accuracy. Increases in connectivity with type-II performance were observed in networks measured while participants directed attention inward (focus on respiration), but not in networks measured during states of neutral (resting state) or exogenous attention. Measures of type-I performance were less sensitive to the subjects? specific attentional states from which the networks were derived. These results suggest the existence of functional brain networks indexing objective performance and accuracy of subjective beliefs distinctively expressed in a set of stable mental states.