Melo, M;
Gusso, GDF;
Levites, M;
Amaro, E;
Massad, E;
Lotufo, PA;
Zeidman, P;
... Friston, KJ; + view all
(2017)
How doctors diagnose diseases and prescribe treatments: an fMRI study of diagnostic salience.
Scientific Reports
, 7
, Article 1304. 10.1038/s41598-017-01482-0.
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Abstract
Understanding the brain mechanisms involved in diagnostic reasoning may contribute to the development of methods that reduce errors in medical practice. In this study we identified similar brain systems for diagnosing diseases, prescribing treatments, and naming animals and objects using written information as stimuli. Employing time resolved modeling of blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) responses enabled time resolved (400 milliseconds epochs) analyses. With this approach it was possible to study neural processes during successive stages of decision making. Our results showed that highly diagnostic information, reducing uncertainty about the diagnosis, decreased monitoring activity in the frontoparietal attentional network and may contribute to premature diagnostic closure, an important cause of diagnostic errors. We observed an unexpected and remarkable switch of BOLD activity within a right lateralized set of brain regions related to awareness and auditory monitoring at the point of responding. We propose that this neurophysiological response is the neural substrate of awareness of one’s own (verbal) response. Our results highlight the intimate relation between attentional mechanisms, uncertainty, and decision making and may assist the advance of approaches to prevent premature diagnostic closure.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | How doctors diagnose diseases and prescribe treatments: an fMRI study of diagnostic salience |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-017-01482-0 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01482-0 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Multidisciplinary Sciences, Science & Technology - Other Topics, DECISION-MAKING, FUNCTIONAL-ORGANIZATION, SPEECH PRODUCTION, SPOKEN LANGUAGE, HUMAN BRAIN, ATTENTION, CORTEX, CONSCIOUSNESS, ARTICULATION, PERCEPTION |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1555421 |
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