ReviewBrain and neuroscience advances2018
Thinking about thinking: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of metacognitive judgements.
Review in Brain and neuroscience advances, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 103 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
103 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Metacognitive performance in Functional Cognitive Disorder (FCD): A meta-analysis.Acta neurologica Belgica · 2026Pooled it
- Episodic and semantic feeling-of-knowing in aging: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2023Pooled it
- Metacognitive sensitivity and symptoms of mental disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Pooled it
- Retrospective confidence judgments: Meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.Human brain mapping · 2021Pooled it
- Can dyadic rope-skipping enhance cooperative behavior in female university students with depressive symptoms? Evidence from behavioral and fNIRS hyperscanning data.BMC psychiatry · 2026Trial
- Towards an integrative neuroscience of metacognition.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Domain generality is an emergent, not inherent, property of metacognition.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Age-Related Differences in Neural Networks for Error Detection and Inhibitory Control: A LORETA-Based Comparative Study.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Article
- Expectation Modulates Hedonic Experiences and Midbrain Responses to Sweet Flavor.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- The Effects of Anticipating Metacognitive Judgments about Mind-Wandering.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- Modeling metacognition and executive functions in the metacognitive wisconsin card sorting test using the neuropsychological digital-twin method.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Ventromedial prefrontal cortex attenuates the link between physiological heart rate reactions to unfairness and value computations in normative decision making.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Hierarchical systems in the default mode network when reasoning about self and other mental states.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Metacognition and cognitive dysfunction in post-COVID condition.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The neurological implications of metacognition.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Integrating computational modeling, neuroimaging, and neuromodulation to decompose perceptual decision-making in healthy aging: a review of methods, findings, and gaps.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2026Review
- Metacognition of ChatGPT in confidence judgements.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2026Article
- Prefrontal Cortex Responses to Conflicting Information.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Neural oscillations of metacognition: evidence for domain-specificity and age-related compensation.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
43 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Metacognition supports reflection upon and control of other cognitive processes. Despite metacognition occupying a central role in human psychology, its neural substrates remain underdetermined, partly due to study-specific differences in task domain and type of metacognitive judgement under study. It is also unclear how metacognition relates to other apparently similar abilities that depend on recursive thought such as theory of mind or mentalising. Now that neuroimaging studies of metacognition are more prevalent, we have an opportunity to characterise consistencies in neural substrates identified across different analysis types and domains. Here we used quantitative activation likelihood estimation methods to synthesise findings from 47 neuroimaging studies on metacognition, divided into categories based on the target of metacognitive evaluation (memory and decision-making), analysis type (judgement-related activation, confidence-related activation, and predictors of metacognitive sensitivity), and, for metamemory judgements, temporal focus (prospective and retrospective). A domain-general network, including medial and lateral prefrontal cortex, precuneus, and insula was associated with the level of confidence in self-performance in both decision-making and memory tasks. We found preferential engagement of right anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in metadecision experiments and bilateral parahippocampal cortex in metamemory experiments. Results on metacognitive sensitivity were inconclusive, likely due to fewer studies reporting this contrast. Finally, by comparing our results to meta-analyses of mentalising, we obtain evidence for common engagement of the ventromedial and anterior dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in both metacognition and mentalising, suggesting that these regions may support second-order representations for thinking about the thoughts of oneself and others.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.