Although altered early stages of visual processing have been reported among schizophrenia patients, how such atypical visual processing may affect higher-level cognition remains largely unknown. Here we tested the hypothesis that metacognitive performance may be atypically modulated by spatial frequency (SF) of visual stimuli among individuals with schizophrenia, given their altered magnocellular function. To study the effect of SF on metacognitive performance, we asked patients and controls to perform a visual detection task on gratings with different SFs and report confidence, and analyzed the data using the signal detection theoretic measure meta-d′. Control subjects showed better metacognitive performance after yes- (stimulus presence) than after no- (stimulus absence) responses (‘yes-response advantage’) for high SF (HSF) stimuli but not for low SF (LSF) stimuli. The patients, to the contrary, showed a ‘yes-response advantage’ not only for HSF but also for LSF stimuli, indicating atypical SF dependency of metacognition. An fMRI experiment using the same task revealed that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), known to be crucial for metacognition, shows activity mirroring the behavioral results: decoding accuracy of perceptual confidence in DLPFC was significantly higher for HSF than for LSF stimuli in controls, whereas this decoding accuracy was independent of SF in patients. Additionally, the functional connectivity of DLPFC with parietal and visual areas was modulated by SF and response type (yes/no) in a different manner between controls and patients. While individuals without schizophrenia may flexibly adapt metacognitive computations across SF ranges, patients may employ a different mechanism that is independent of SF. Because visual stimuli of low SF have been linked to predictive top-down processing, this may reflect atypical functioning in these processes in schizophrenia.

尽管在精神分裂症患者中已经报道了视觉加工的早期阶段发生了改变，但是这种非典型的视觉加工如何影响更高水平的认知仍然是未知的。在这里，我们测试了以下假设：鉴于精神分裂症患者的巨细胞功能改变，其元认知能力可能会受到精神分裂症患者视觉刺激的空间频率（SF）的非典型调节。为了研究SF对元认知性能的影响，我们要求患者和对照在具有不同SF的光栅上执行视觉检测任务并报告置信度，并使用信号检测理论量度meta-d'分析数据。对于高SF（HSF）刺激，对照组在有（刺激存在）应答后表现出比无（刺激无应答）反应（“是-应答优势”）更好的元认知能力，但对于低SF（LSF）刺激则没有。相反，这些患者不仅对HSF表现出“是-反应优势”，而且对LSF刺激表现出“是-反应优势”，表明非典型SF对元认知的依赖性。使用同一任务进行的功能磁共振成像实验表明，已知对元认知至关重要的背外侧前额叶皮层（DLPFC）显示了反映行为结果的活动：HSF对DLPFC知觉信心的解码准确度明显高于对照组中LSF刺激，而这种解码的准确性与患者的SF无关。另外，SF和反应类型（是/否）以对照和患者之间不同的方式调节DLPFC与顶叶和视觉区域的功能连通性。虽然没有精神分裂症的个体可以灵活地适应跨SF范围的元认知计算，但患者可以采用独立于SF的不同机制。由于低SF的视觉刺激已与自上而下的预测性处理相关联，因此这可能反映了精神分裂症在这些过程中的非典型功能。