Abstract
A lack of inhibitory control appears to contribute to the development and maintenance of addictive disorders. Among the mechanisms thought to assist inhibitory control, an increasing focus has been drawn on the so-called preparatory suppression, which refers to the drastic suppression observed in the motor system during action preparation. Interestingly, deficient preparatory suppression has been reported in alcohol use disorders. However, it is currently unknown whether this deficit also concerns behavioral, substance-free, addictions, and thus whether it might represent a vulnerability factor common to both substance and behavioral addictive disorders. To address this question, neural measures of preparatory suppression were obtained in gambling disorder patients (GDPs) and matched healthy control subjects. To do so, single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over the left and the right motor cortex to elicit motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) in both hands when participants were performing a choice reaction time task. In addition, choice and rapid response impulsivity were evaluated in all participants, using self-report measures and neuropsychological tasks. Consistent with a large body of literature, the MEP data revealed that the activity of the motor system was drastically reduced during action preparation in healthy subjects. Surprisingly, though, a similar MEP suppression was observed in GDPs, indicating that those subjects do not globally suffer from a deficit in preparatory suppression. By contrast, choice impulsivity was higher in GDPs than healthy subjects, and a higher rapid response impulsivity was found in the more severe forms of GD. Altogether, those results demonstrated that although some aspects of inhibitory control are impaired in GDPs, these alterations do not seem to concern preparatory suppression. Yet, the profile of individuals suffering of a GD is very heterogeneous, with only part of them presenting an impulsive disposition, such as in patients with alcohol use disorders. Hence, a lack of preparatory suppression may be only shared by this sub-type of addicts, an interesting issue for future investigation.
Highlights
Self-regulation is essential to behave in a goal-directed manner
Extensive work is being dedicated to understanding these similarities and to identifying vulnerability markers that may be common to all addictive disorders, with one promising candidate being a lack of inhibitory control
We addressed this question by assessing preparatory suppression, a specific facet of inhibitory control, in a group of gambling disorder patients (GDPs) and in matched healthy control subjects (HCs)
Summary
Self-regulation is essential to behave in a goal-directed manner. In particular, the ability to suppress prepotent but inappropriate responses is a key component, preventing one to respond to stimulus-driven impulses [1, 2]. By measuring motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) elicited by single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the primary motor cortex (M1), studies have monitored changes in the excitability of the corticospinal pathway during instructed-delay choice reaction time (RT) tasks [10,11,12,13,14] Such tasks typically require participants to choose between responding with the left of the right hand according to an informative preparatory cue, and to withhold their response until the onset of an imperative signal. When TMS pulses are applied between the cue and the imperative, the amplitude of MEPs probed in both hands are strongly reduced relative to resting conditions [15,16,17] This phenomenon, referred to as preparatory suppression (or inhibition), is thought to help prevent premature or inappropriate motor responses and, more generally, to ensure some sort of impulse control [8, 18,19,20]
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