The Neural Signature of Reality-Monitoring: A Meta-Analysis of Functional Neuroimaging Studies

Description: Distinguishing imagination and thoughts from information we perceived from the environment is important in the daily life situations. The process of identifying the source of our memories is called reality-monitoring. We adopted a metanalytic approach to investigate the brain regions that are involved in reality-monitoring and explored the common brain activations with self-monitoring, a process consisting of distinguishing self-generated actions or thoughts from actions or thoughts generated by others. We conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis of reality-monitoring meta-analysis (172 healthy subjects) revealing clusters including the lobule VI of the cerebellum, the right amPFC and anterior thalamic projections. The self-monitoring neuroimaging studies (192 healthy subjects) highlighted the involvement of a network including the lobule VI of the left cerebellum and fronto-temporo-parietal regions. Our results finally suggest that the lobule VI of the cerebellum is consistently engaged in both reality- and self-monitoring. Overall, the current findings offer new insights into the common brain network underlying reality-monitoring and suggest that the neural signature of the self that may occur during self-production should persist in memories.