Abstract
Proactive motor inhibition refers to endogenous preparatory mechanisms facilitating action inhibition, whereas reactive motor inhibition is considered to be a sudden stopping process triggered by external signals. Previous studies were inconclusive about the temporal dynamics of involved neurocognitive processes during proactive and reactive motor control. Using electroencephalography (EEG), we investigated the time-course of proactive and reactive inhibition, measuring event-related oscillations and event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants performed in a cued go/nogo paradigm with cues indicating whether the motor response might or might not have to be inhibited. Based on the dual mechanisms of control (DMC) framework by Braver, we investigated the role of attentional effects, motor preparation in the sensorimotor cortex and prefrontal cognitive control mechanisms, separating effects before and after target onset. In the cue-target interval, proactive motor inhibition was associated with increased attention, reflected in reduced visual alpha power and an increased contingent negative variation (CNV). At the same time, motor inhibition was modulated by reduced sensorimotor beta power. After target onset, proactive inhibition resulted in an increased N1, indicating allocation of attention towards relevant stimuli, increased prefrontal beta power and a modulation of sensorimotor mu activity. As in previous studies, reactive stopping of motor actions was associated with increased prefrontal beta power and increased sensorimotor beta activity. The results stress the relevance of attentional mechanisms for proactive inhibition and speak for different neurocognitive mechanisms being involved in the early preparation for and in later implementation of motor inhibition.
Highlights
Motor control is one of the key executive functions in daily life, allowing us to flexibly adapt or inhibit our behavior to a changing environment according to our current goals
Visual Attention Effects Occipital alpha To investigate the role of visual attention in proactive motor control, we examined condition differences in alpha power over occipital sites in the cue-target interval
Whereas alpha in Certain Go (CG)-trials increased towards the baseline level, this rebound was dampened in Maybe Stop (MS)-trials resulting in reduced alpha power (Figure 2A)
Summary
Motor control is one of the key executive functions in daily life, allowing us to flexibly adapt or inhibit our behavior to a changing environment according to our current goals. Two variants of inhibitory motor control can be distinguished, reactive and proactive control (Aron, 2011). Most behavioral and neuroscientific research on motor control has focused on reactive inhibition. Proactive and Reactive Motor Control context-dependent, top-down endogenous processes are involved. This for instance can be observed in psychiatric patients having deficits in urge-control, supposedly linked to a lack of such top-down signals. Proactive inhibition seems a more ecologically valid model and promising in order to understand fundamental aspects of motor control in everyday life as well as in psychiatric and neurological disorders (for review see Aron, 2011)
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