Abstract
A critical issue in executive control is how the nervous system exerts flexibility to inhibit a prepotent response and adapt to sudden changes in the environment. In this study, force measurement was used to capture “partial” unsuccessful trials that are highly relevant in extending the current understanding of motor inhibition processing. Moreover, a modified version of the stop-signal task was used to control and eliminate potential attentional capture effects from the motor inhibition index. The results illustrate that the non-canceled force and force rate increased as a function of stop-signal delay (SSD), offering new objective indices for gauging the dynamic inhibitory process. Motor response (time and force) was a function of delay in the presentation of novel/infrequent stimuli. A larger lateralized readiness potential (LRP) amplitude in go and novel stimuli indicated an influence of the novel stimuli on central motor processing. Moreover, an early N1 component reflects an index of motor inhibition in addition to the N2 component reported in previous studies. Source analysis revealed that the activation of N2 originated from inhibitory control associated areas: the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), pre-motor cortex, and primary motor cortex. Regarding partial responses, LRP and error-related negativity (ERNs) were associated with error correction processes, whereas the N2 component may indicate the functional overlap between inhibition and error correction. In sum, the present study has developed reliable and objective indices of motor inhibition by introducing force, force-rate and electrophysiological measures, further elucidating our understandings of dynamic motor inhibition and error correction.
Highlights
The ability to inhibit a pre-potent motor response to adapt to sudden changes in the environment is an important function of executive control
The unsuccessful stop trials (USST) trials in which the peak force was smaller than the model-threshold were defined as partial USST and the trials otherwise were defined as full USST (Figure 3)
We found that the full USST RT was shorter than the go RT
Summary
The ability to inhibit a pre-potent motor response to adapt to sudden changes in the environment is an important function of executive control. Several studies (de Jong et al, 1990; McGarry and Franks, 1997) have indicated that motor inhibition may not necessarily occur in such an allor-none manner and this position may have originated due to the mode of responses collected from several motor inhibition studies that primarily involved key presses (Joundi et al, 2012) These studies show evidence against a ballistic stage because the response execution could be interrupted or modified (de Jong et al, 1990; Scangos and Stuphorn, 2010; Schultze-Kraft et al, 2016). It has been suggested to view the inhibition process as a disruptive process rather than in an allor-none fashion
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