サルを用いたメタ記憶の神経生理学的研究に向けて

抄録

Metamemory refers to the knowledge about one's own memory capabilities and mnemonic strategies that support efficient learning and memory, and/or to the awareness and recognition about on-going mnemonic processes as well as what is stored in memory. Psychological studies established experimental methods to investigate the accuracy of human metamnemonic judgments and demonstrated that humans were capable of monitoring their own memory accurately. Recently, a number of neuropsychological as well as neuroimaging studies have indicated that the prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role in metamemory. Meanwhile there have been growing interests in exploring metacognitive abilities in animals. These lines of studies have developed new experimental paradigms suitable for systematically investigating the capability of animals' metamemory. In this article, we first briefly review previous studies on metamemory in humans and animals. Based on the findings from these studies, we then discuss strategies for examining neuronal substrates of metamemory in monkeys through neurophysiological approaches.