Brain connectivity profiles associated with perceptual task performance

Abstract

Over the last several decades, extensive research has uncovered the brain areas that support many perceptual tasks. However, surprisingly little is known about how the brain connectivity profile during task execution is related to task performance. Here we collected functional MRI (fMRI) data from 50 human subjects performing a simple perceptual task with confidence, and investigated how the functional connectivity profile while engaging on a task is related to behavioral performance. Specifically, functional connectivity was estimated based on the 200 brain regions identified in the Schaefer atlas. We found that higher accuracy is associated with increased modularity, or the extent to which brain regions combine to form communities, but was unrelated to reaction time (RT), confidence, or metacognitive efficiency. Further, we examined how these behavioral variables were related to the connectivity between large brain networks. The results revealed that subjects who exhibited faster response times had stronger connectivity between the dorsal and the ventral attentional network and slower responses were associated with stronger connectivity between the ventral attention and limbic networks. In addition, confidence was associated with the strength of connectivity between the somatomotor and both the default mode and dorsal attention networks, consistent with theories of action-related influences on confidence. Surprisingly, global brain connectivity was not related to metacognitive efficiency, suggesting that the quality of one’s metacognition may not depend on global brain dynamics. These results demonstrate that different components of task performance depend on different brain connectivity profiles and provide insight into the mechanisms behind simple perceptual tasks.