Abstract
There is a dearth of studies examining the underlying mechanisms of blink suppression and the effects of urge and reward, particularly those measuring subsecond electroencephalogram (EEG) brain dynamics. To address these issues, we designed an EEG study to ask 3 questions: 1) How does urge develop? 2) What are EEG-correlates of blink suppression? 3) How does reward change brain dynamics related to urge suppression? This study examined healthy children (N = 26, age 8–12 years) during blink suppression under 3 conditions: blink freely (i.e., no suppression), blink suppressed, and blink suppressed for reward. During suppression conditions, children used a joystick to indicate their subjective urge to blink. Results showed that 1) half of the trials were associated with clearly defined urge time course of ~7 s, which was accompanied by EEG delta (1–4 Hz) power reduction localized at anterior cingulate cortex (ACC); 2) the EEG correlates of blink suppression were found in left prefrontal theta (4–8 Hz) power elevation; and 3) reward improved blink suppression performance while reducing the EEG delta power observed in ACC. We concluded that the empirically supported urge time course and underlying EEG modulations provide a subsecond chronospatial model of the brain dynamics during urge- and reward-mediated blink suppression.
Highlights
Clarifying the neural mechanisms of blink suppression in children is important for understanding how mental effort controls behavior, which may still be under developmental influences, unlike a comparable adult model
Urge Low showed a flat pattern, indicating that about half of the blinks may have occurred with little to no urge experienced by participants
Urge High trials showed a well-defined waveform that starts to rise -5 s relative to blink, while Urge Low trials did not show much modulation; (2) Blink suppression was associated with EEG theta band power increase near or in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC); and (3) Reward suppressed urge-related EEG delta band power decrease near or in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)
Summary
Clarifying the neural mechanisms of blink suppression in children is important for understanding how mental effort controls behavior, which may still be under developmental influences, unlike a comparable adult model. This understanding has critical value in child psychiatry, for example in designing a clinical behavioral training program for treating children with Tourette’s syndrome (Woods and Himle, 2004; Greene et al, 2015). Neuroimaging studies using PET on blink suppression reported activation in right insular cortex and anterior cingulate cortex (Lerner et al, 2009). This study was one of several to support the established relationship between blink suppression and the activation within the right insula
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