Neural correlates of intentional and stimulus-driven inhibition: a comparison

Margot A Schel,Eveline A Crone,K Richard Ridderinkhof,Patrick Haggard,Marcel Brass,Simone Kühn

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00027

Abstract

People can inhibit an action because of an instruction by an external stimulus, or because of their own internal decision. The similarities and differences between these two forms of inhibition are not well understood. Therefore, in the present study the neural correlates of intentional and stimulus-driven inhibition were tested in the same subjects. Participants performed two inhibition tasks while lying in the scanner: the marble task in which they had to choose for themselves between intentionally acting on, or inhibiting a prepotent response to measure intentional inhibition, and the classical stop signal task in which an external signal triggered the inhibition process. Results showed that intentional inhibition decision processes rely on a neural network that has been documented extensively for stimulus-driven inhibition, including bilateral parietal and lateral prefrontal cortex and pre-supplementary motor area. We also found activation in dorsal frontomedian cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus during intentional inhibition that depended on the history of previous choices. Together, these results indicate that intentional inhibition and stimulus-driven inhibition engage a common inhibition network, but intentional inhibition is also characterized by additional context-dependent neural activation in medial prefrontal cortex.

Highlights

In daily life, most people experience and exercise a degree of voluntary control over their actions
Neuroimaging research has shown that the processes of intentional action selection and planning are supported by a medial prefrontal network, including the rostral cingulate zone and presupplementary motor area (Lau et al, 2004, 2006)
The analyses resulted in four main effects: (1) both intentional action and intentional inhibition decisions resulted in a large network of activation including the lateral prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, and presupplementary motor area (preSMA), regions previously referred to as the intentionality network (Lau et al, 2004; van Eimeren et al, 2006)

Summary

Introduction

Most people experience and exercise a degree of voluntary control over their actions. Intentional inhibition has been conceptualized as a late “veto-process,” a final checkand-brake function before action execution (Kühn et al, 2009; Filevich et al, 2012) It has been proposed as a third component in models of intentional action generation, the so-called “whether–component” (Brass and Haggard, 2008). Two recent studies aimed to investigate intentional inhibition by asking participants to prepare actions, but to occasionally cancel them at the last possible moment prior to action. These studies revealed a distinct neural network that was more activated in intentional inhibition than in intentional action, including the dorsal frontomedian cortex (dFMC) (Brass and Haggard, 2007; Kühn et al, 2009)

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion