The period of making a perceptual decision is often followed by a period of confidence generation where one rates the likely accuracy of the initial decision. However, it remains unclear whether the same or different neural circuits are engaged during periods of perceptual decision making and confidence generation. To address this question, we conducted two functional MRI experiments in which we dissociated the periods related to perceptual decision making and confidence report by either separating their respective regressors or asking for confidence ratings only in the second half of the experiment. We found that perceptual decision making and confidence reports gave rise to activations in large and mostly overlapping brain circuits including frontal, parietal, posterior, and cingulate regions with the results being remarkably consistent across the two experiments. Further, the confidence report period activated a number of unique regions, whereas there was no evidence for the decision period activating unique regions not involved in the confidence period. We discuss the possible reasons for this overlap and explore their implications about theories of perceptual decision making and confidence generation.

中文翻译：

---

在感知决策和置信度期间激活重叠和独特的神经回路

做出感性决定的时期之后通常是置信度产生的时期，在该时期中人们对初始决定的可能准确性进行评估。但是，尚不清楚在感知决策和置信度生成期间是否使用相同或不同的神经回路。为了解决这个问题，我们进行了两个功能性MRI实验，其中我们通过分离各自的回归变量或仅在实验的后半段要求置信度来分离与感知决策和置信度报告相关的时间段。我们发现，知觉决策和信心报告引起了大脑大部分（包括额叶，顶叶，后叶，和扣带区域，结果在两个实验中都非常一致。此外，置信度报告期激活了多个唯一区域，而没有证据表明决策期激活了不在置信度内的唯一区域。我们讨论了这种重叠的可能原因，并探讨了它们对感知决策和置信度产生的影响。