RE: Psychology Addict # 54 | Metacognition, Neuroplasticity & PR’s Incredible Brain.
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That's a brilliant analysis of the papers from 2014 and the current one. This makes me wonder what was the exact reason behind the restoration of metacognition in one study Vs other. I couldn't say if they have a big difference in their methods. However, like you said they had brain lesions for different reasons. This curiosity is bugging me a lot.
Anyhow, this also reminded me of phantom blindness mentioned by VS Ramachandran in his book "phantoms in the brain". In that case, victims who have suffered some sort of brain injury can see, but they can't know that they can see. For instance, they can in quick reflex pick and pass the largest or smallest box on the table but can't know that they can see the box. It's been a long time since I read that book, but I think, in this case, the visual cognition for knowing that they saw an object was in a different region of the brain (I will go home and confirm this later). So there is a likelihood that different kind of metacognition processes are distributed across the brain?
Also, I remember reading this article long ago. But he seems to be doing ok in life. It seems as if the neural networks in another place can learn to do the same tasks, as your post suggests. However, the question that's bugging me when it does and when it does not? Anyway, I will go and read more on the topic. Thanks for sharing this wonderful post.
You raise incredibly interesting points in this comment science blocks! Way to get my brain going. I am sat here at my desk and am not quite sure where to start. There is so much to be said.
I will try my best to make this concise and as straight-forward as I can 😊
Let’s start with the following statement. For, visual perception is a topic within my field, among many, towards which I have immense interest.
Seeing involves a complex series of stages and mechanisms : from the optical structures of the eye (e.g. rods and cones) to the occipital cortex, where basic features of visual stimuli are processed and slowly constructed to represent the world. For example, between the retina and the occipital cortex you’ll find the Lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). These are thalamic structures responsible for giving us conscious visual awareness (Please note this is just a gist of the gist of the whole picture).
Damage to any of these stages or mechanisms can lead to individual differences in how we see and how we perceived the world around us. For instance, there is such thing as vision-for-perception and vision-for action. These are processes that involve two different brain pathways: the ventral stream and the dorsal stream, respectively.
The individuals you mentioned in your study : “those who can in quick reflex pick and pass the largest or smallest box on the table but can't know that they can see the box.”, probably suffered damage to some connections in the ventral pathways, while their dorsal pathways remained intact. There are numerous studies on this! I would have to go through some old materials and dig them out for you, though!
But, as far as I am concerned, rather than a metacognitive ability, visual perception is regarded as a cognitive one.
Visual perception has to do with brain processes that help us to make sense and interpret what our eyes see. Metacognition is of higher order cognition and it involves planning, evaluation, reflection, self-awareness.
Having said that. I then recall your query:
I believe this is more or less the case, yes. But, my goodness, I am no authority! Still, take visual perception for instance, all those structures that we mentioned are involved in seeing things and allowing us to attribute meaning to them. They also allow us to reliably move around in the world and locate ourselves in relation to what is surrounding us. Of course, some of these actions are automatic and unconscious, but many others require some level of planning and even foresight, which takes us back to high-order cognitive processes.
This is a very, very complex, but fascinating topic! One could write 50 pages about it 😊
Thank you for stopping by dear @scienceblocks,
I truly appreciate your constant support and encouragement towards my work. Have a wonderful week ahead!
PS: So much for trying to be concise! So sorry :P