Spatiotemporal brain dynamics supporting the immediate automatization of inhibitory control by implementation intentions

Michael De Pretto,Lucas Spierer,Lucien Rochat

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-10832-x

Michael De Pretto, Lucas Spierer + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-10832-x

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Journal: Scientific Reports	Publication Date: Sep 7, 2017
Citations: 16	License type: open-access

Affiliation: University of Fribourg, University of Geneva

Abstract

While cognitive interventions aiming at reinforcing intentional executive control of unwanted response showed only modest effects on impulse control disorders, the establishment of fast automatic, stimulus-driven inhibition of responses to specific events with implementation intention self-regulation strategies has proven to be an effective remediation approach. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying implementation intentions remain largely unresolved. We addressed this question by comparing electrical neuroimaging analyses of event-related potentials recorded during a Go/NoGo task between groups of healthy participants receiving either standard or implementation intentions instructions on the inhibition stimuli. Inhibition performance improvements with implementation intentions were associated with a Group by Stimulus interaction 200–250 ms post-stimulus onset driven by a selective decrease in response to the inhibition stimuli within the left superior temporal gyrus, the right precuneus and the right temporo-parietal junction. We further observed that the implementation intentions group showed already at the beginning of the task the pattern of task-related functional activity reached after practice in the group having received standard instructions. We interpret our results in terms of an immediate establishment of an automatic, bottom-up form of inhibitory control by implementation intentions, supported by stimulus-driven retrieval of verbally encoded stimulus-response mapping rules, which in turn triggered inhibitory processes.

Highlights

Referred to as ‘inhibitory control’, the ability to suppress ongoing or planned cognitive or motor processes is a key executive function mainly involved in overriding impulsive or habitual responses[1]
In the II group, 94% of the participants used a strategy focusing on the stimuli to inhibit; 65% of the participants reported repeating the instruction in the if- form, and the remaining repeated the stimulus to inhibit
The 33% remaining participants did not report using a particular strategy. These results confirm that: (i) the two groups differed in their strategies; and ii) II formulation dramatically increased the utilization of a specific (II) strategy, thereby reducing the variability in response strategy

Summary

Introduction

Referred to as ‘inhibitory control’, the ability to suppress ongoing or planned cognitive or motor processes is a key executive function mainly involved in overriding impulsive or habitual responses[1]. Automatizations of inhibitory control have been observed in studies involving the practice of Go/NoGo tasks in which a given ‘NoGo’ stimulus was repeatedly associated with stopping goals[12, 13] After such training regimens, inhibitory control became directly triggered by the stimuli via the brain regions implementing stimulus-response (S-R) mapping rules (parietal cortices at 100 ms)[14]. Hallam et al.[23] further reported reductions in fMRI activity in within the left amygdala, and increased activity in the right IFG and the ventro-parietal cortex by II The authors interpreted these results as indicating an improvement of the processing of the stimuli and the access to the expected response scheme by II. The involvement of these areas in auditory and self-centered mental imagery suggests that II favored the retrieval of verbally encoded response schemes[27,28,29,30,31]

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