Original Article

Frontal Pole, Cingulate Gyrus, and Precuneus Cortex Represent the Confidence Level in Prediction of Other's Risky Decision-Making.

Abstract

Purpose: Reporting confidence after a decision-making task is widely used in the studies of metacognition, a cognitive factor usually defined as “thinking about thinking.” When people predict others’ behavior in risky situations, they consider various factors affecting others’ choices; at that point, they can determine how confident they are about their predictions about the other’s decision.

Materials and Methods: This study investigates human neural activities in different confidence levels when participants predict others’ financial choices in a risky decision-making task. For this aim, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) combined with behavioral tasks is used to demonstrate the neural representation of human confidence level about others’ possible choices. We scanned 21 healthy and normal participants in two separate sessions each containing three runs.

Results: The results indicate that the frontal pole cortex (FPC), cingulate gyrus, and precuneus cortex activities are correlated with the confidence of people in their predictions (P<0.0005; cluster size, k>75). Using behavioral data, we found that When participants answer correctly, their confidence level as a metacognition factor increases simultaneously and vice versa.

Conclusion: These key findings suggest that the brain's activities can represent subjects’ confidence level in predicting risky behaviors and show how metacognition in the theory of mind for prediction of others’ choices is represented in the brain’s activity.

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IssueVol 12 No 1 (2025) QRcode
SectionOriginal Article(s)
DOI https://doi.org/10.18502/fbt.v12i1.17729
Keywords
Confidence Level Prediction Metacognition Decision-Making
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How to Cite
1.
Shoaa Haghighi A, Safari S, Oloumi E, Jameei H, Hossein Zadeh GA, Vahabie A-H. Frontal Pole, Cingulate Gyrus, and Precuneus Cortex Represent the Confidence Level in Prediction of Other’s Risky Decision-Making. Frontiers Biomed Technol. 2025;12(1):18-22.