Inhibitory Motor Control Research Articles

Influence of competition on motor inhibitory control: Evidence from ago/no-go task.

The present experiment examined how individuals' motor response execution and inhibition - as measured by a Go/No-Go (GNG) task - is modulated by social influence arising from competition. We found that participants in a competition group responded significantly faster to frequently occurring Go stimuli than those in a control group, while no between-group difference in accuracy was found. This indicates that competition leads participants to favor a response strategy of maximizing the speed of prepotent motor response execution without sacrificing accuracy. In addition, participants in the competition group committed significantly more errors to infrequently occurring No-Go stimuli than those in the control group. Together, these findings suggest that competition speeds up prepotent motor response execution, which comes at the cost of reduced prepotent response inhibition. Furthermore, increased errors in prepotent response inhibition due to competition correlated positively with self-reported trait competitiveness and trait motor impulsivity, identifying the link between personality traits and competition-induced attenuation of inhibition efficiency. Our signal detection analysis revealed that these behavioral effects can be attributed to a combination of a pronounced tendency to respond in general to both Go stimuli and No-Go stimuli, as evidenced by increased response bias (C), and reduced discrimination of No-Go stimuli from Go stimuli, as indexed by decreased sensitivity (d'). Our experiment offers novel insights into how motor control is modulated by engaging in competition.

8372 Evidence of dACC Glutamate Modulation During Top-down Inhibitory Control Predicting Weight Loss Ability in Individuals with Obesity Using1H fMRS

Abstract Disclosure: J.M. Eichstaedt: None. R. Sochocki: None. D. Khatib: None. N. Miller: None. V.A. Diwadkar: None. P. Burghardt: None. A.E. Rothberg: None. J.A. Stanley: None. Poor weight loss maintenance (WLM) following dietary intervention has been associated with poor top-down inhibitory control. The neurobiological mechanisms are not fully understood; it is not clear if changes to inhibitory control are specific to the presence of appetitive food cues. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) is central to inhibitory control and can be conceptualized selectively withholding ‘prepotent’ motor responses. This is driven by highly integrated glutamatergic and GABAergic neurotransmission. Temporal changes in glutamate, reflecting shifts in glutamate neurotransmission, can be detected under distinct processes or task conditions using [1]H fMRS. We investigated differences in dACC glutamate under task conditions with or without inhibitory motor control, utilizing neutral Squares and Food/Non-food stimuli, and their association with weight loss. Data were acquired from 13 individuals with obesity following dietary intervention resulting in 10% weight loss (5F; mean age: 50.1±5.2yrs). A visually-guided motor tapping task was used requiring participants to respond to stimuli under two modes, “Non-Selective” (motor responses to 100% of trials) and “Selective” (withholding responses on 20% of trials - involving both motor control and inhibition), and under two stimuli types (Squares and appetitive Food/Non-Food cues). Glutamate modulation changes (relative to the total signal) were assessed across stimuli type (independent of task mode) using repeated measures generalizing estimating equations (GEE) approach (SAS GENMOD). The correlation between glutamate during the Selective mode with food/non-food stimuli and percentage of weight lost during the dietary intervention was also assessed. The stimuli model term was not significant (χ2=3.50, p=0.174), but post hoc analysis indicated significantly increased glutamate during the Squares (z=-1.99, p=0.046), but not the Food/Non-food (z=-1.39, p=0.163) relative to baseline. A trending correlation between decreasing dACC glutamate modulation (Selective mode, Food/Non-Food) and decreasing percentage of weight lost during the intervention was observed (R2=0.274, F(1,11)=4.15, p=0.07). This suggests that the presence of appetitive food cues leads to a non-significant change in the dACC glutamate modulation independent of inhibitory or motor alone responses. The potential correlation between dACC glutamate modulation and weight loss provides preliminary support that appetitive food cues influence inhibitory control and the extent of the influences may be related to one’s ability to maintain weight loss. These results could provide greater understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying top-down inhibitory processes influenced by affect and difficulties with weight loss and maintenance, potentially fueling better treatment for successful long-term WLM in obesity. Presentation: 6/1/2024

The association between music training and executive function in 6–7-year-old children

Executive function development is especially important in the last year of the preschool period because this period precedes the transition to school. Therefore, it is relevant to study extracurricular activities that can positively impact the development of executive function in 6–7-year-old children. According to earlier research, executive function development might be positively influenced by music training. The current cross-sectional study aimed to explore differences in executive function among 6–7-year-old preschoolers depending on participation in music training. In the current research, children were divided into two groups of 37 participants each: children who received music training for at least half a year and children who did not receive music training. Children in both groups did not participate in dance training because music is also actively used during dance training. Background variables such as participation in extracurricular activities, screen time, family singing activities, maternal education, and family income level did not differ between the groups. The study revealed that the children who received music training had a higher level of motor inhibitory control compared to the children who did not receive music or dance training. This study offers further support for the association between executive function and music training in preschoolers.

Inhibitory control expertise through sports practice: A scoping review

Introduction
 The stopping of a planned motor response is called motor inhibitory control (IC) and allows humans to produce appropriate goal-directed behaviour. The ever-changing environment of many sports requires athletes to rapidly adapt to unpredictable situations in which split-second suppressions of planned or current actions are needed.
 Methods
 In this scoping review, the approach of the PRISMA-ScR was used to determine whether sports practice develops IC and, if so, which sports factors are key to building IC expertise. The PubMed, Web of Science Core Collection, ScienceDirect and APA PsycNet Advanced Search databases were searched with predefined combinations of keywords.
 Results
 Twenty-six articles were selected and analysed. Most of the publications (n = 21) compared athletes with non-athletes, or athletes from other sports. Only a few articles (n = 5) reported results from intra-sport comparison. Overall, the studies reported better IC performance in athletes compared to non-athletes.
 Discussion/Conclusion
 The correlational link from sports practice to IC improvement is observed but additional longitudinal protocols are needed to prove its direct link. Findings have implication for determining whether IC could represent a marker of performance and thus for supporting the implementation of cognitive training in sport.

Effects of dopaminergic treatment on inhibitory control differ across Hoehn and Yahr stages of Parkinson's disease.

Motor inhibitory control, a core component of cognitive control, is impaired in Parkinson's disease, dramatically impacting patients' abilities to implement goal-oriented adaptive strategies. A progressive loss of the midbrain's dopamine neurons characterizes Parkinson's disease and causes motor features responsive to dopaminergic treatments. Although such treatments restore motor symptoms, their impact on response inhibition is controversial. Most studies failed to show any effect of dopaminergic medicaments, although three studies found that these drugs selectively improved inhibitory control in early-stage patients. Importantly, all previous studies assessed only one domain of motor inhibition, i.e. reactive inhibition (the ability to react to a stop signal). The other domain, i.e. proactive inhibition (the ability to modulate reactive inhibition pre-emptively according to the current context), was utterly neglected. To re-examine this issue, we recruited cognitively unimpaired Parkinson's patients under dopaminergic treatment in the early (Hoehn and Yahr, 1-1.5, n = 20), intermediate (Hoehn and Yahr 2, n = 20), and moderate/advanced (Hoehn and Yahr, 2.5-3, n = 20) stages of the disease. Using a cross-sectional study design, we compared their performance on a simple reaction-time task and a stop-signal task randomly performed twice on dopaminergic medication (ON) and after medication withdrawal (OFF). Normative data were collected on 30 healthy controls. Results suggest that medication effects are stage-dependent. In Hoehn and Yahr 1-1.5 patients, drugs selectively impair reactive inhibition, leaving proactive inhibition unaffected. In the ON state, Hoehn and Yahr two patients experienced impaired proactive inhibition, whereas reactive inhibition is no longer affected, as it deteriorates even during the OFF state. By contrast, Hoehn and Yahr 2.5-3 patients exhibited less efficient reactive and proactive inhibition in the OFF state, and medication slightly improved proactive inhibition. This evidence aligns with the dopamine overdose hypothesis, indicating that drug administration may overdose intact dopamine circuitry in the earliest stages, impairing associated cognitive functions. In later stages, the progressive degeneration of dopaminergic neurons prevents the overdose and can exert some beneficial effects. Thus, our findings suggest that inhibitory control assessment might help tailor pharmacological therapy across the disease stage to enhance Parkinson's disease patients' quality of life by minimizing the hampering of inhibitory control and maximizing the reduction of motor symptoms.

Excessive excitability of inhibitory cortical circuit and disturbance of ballistic targeting movement in degenerative cerebellar ataxia

This study aimed to investigate abnormalities in inhibitory cortical excitability and motor control during ballistic-targeting movements in individuals with degenerative cerebellar ataxia (DCA). Sixteen participants took part in the study (DCA group [n = 8] and healthy group [n = 8]). The resting motor-threshold and cortical silent period (cSP) were measured in the right-hand muscle using transcranial magnetic stimulation over the left primary motor cortex. Moreover, the performance of the ballistic-targeting task with right wrist movements was measured. The Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia was used to evaluate the severity of ataxia. The results indicated that the cSP was significantly longer in participants with DCA compared to that in healthy controls. However, there was no correlation between cSP and severity of ataxia. Furthermore, cSP was linked to the ballistic-targeting task performance in healthy participants but not in participants with DCA. These findings suggest that there is excessive activity in the gamma-aminobutyric acid-mediated cortical inhibitory circuit in individuals with DCA. However, this increase in inhibitory activity not only fails to contribute to the control of ballistic-targeting movement but also shows no correlation with the severity of ataxia. These imply that increased excitability in inhibitory cortical circuits in the DCA may not contribute the motor control as much as it does in healthy older adults under limitations associated with a small sample size. The study's results contribute to our understanding of motor control abnormalities in people with DCA and provide potential evidence for further research in this area.

Offline 20 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation over the right inferior frontal gyrus increases theta activity during a motor response inhibition task

ObjectivesPrevious studies have shown that the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) and the pre-supplementary motor area (preSMA) play an important role in motor inhibitory control. The aim of the study was to use theta frequency transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to modulate brain activity in the rIFG and preSMA and to test the effects of stimulation using a motor response inhibition task. MethodsIn four sessions, 20 healthy participants received tACS at 6 Hz over preSMA or rIFG, or 20 Hz over rIFG (to test frequency specificity), or sham stimulation before task processing. After each type of stimulation, the participants performed the Go/NoGo task with simultaneous electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. ResultsBy stimulating rIFG and preSMA with 6 Hz tACS, we were not able to modulate either behavioral performance nor the EEG correlate. Interestingly, 20 Hz tACS over the rIFG significantly increased theta activity, however without behavioral effects. This increased theta activity did not coincide with the stimulation area and was localized in the fronto-central and centro-parietal areas. ConclusionsThe inclusion of a control frequency is crucial to test for frequency specificity. Our findings are in accordance with previous studies showing that after effects of tACS are not restricted to the stimulation frequency but can also occur in other frequency bands.

Brain motion networks predict head motion during rest- and task-fMRI.

The capacity to stay still during scanning, which is necessary to avoid motion confounds while imaging, varies markedly between people. Here we investigated the effect of head motion on functional connectivity using connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) and publicly available brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 414 individuals with low frame-to-frame motion (Δd < 0.18 mm). Leave-one-out was used for internal cross-validation of head motion prediction in 207 participants, and twofold cross-validation was used in an independent sample (n = 207). Parametric testing, as well as CPM-based permutations for null hypothesis testing, revealed strong linear associations between observed and predicted values of head motion. Motion prediction accuracy was higher for task- than for rest-fMRI, and for absolute head motion (d) than for Δd. Denoising attenuated the predictability of head motion, but stricter framewise displacement threshold (FD = 0.2 mm) for motion censoring did not alter the accuracy of the predictions obtained with lenient censoring (FD = 0.5 mm). For rest-fMRI, prediction accuracy was lower for individuals with low motion (mean Δd < 0.02 mm; n = 200) than for those with moderate motion (Δd < 0.04 mm; n = 414). The cerebellum and default-mode network (DMN) regions that forecasted individual differences in d and Δd during six different tasks- and two rest-fMRI sessions were consistently prone to the deleterious effect of head motion. However, these findings generalized to a novel group of 1,422 individuals but not to simulated datasets without neurobiological contributions, suggesting that cerebellar and DMN connectivity could partially reflect functional signals pertaining to inhibitory motor control during fMRI.

Individual differences in beta-band oscillations predict motor-inhibitory control.

The ability of motor-inhibitory control is critical in daily life. The physiological mechanisms underlying motor inhibitory control deficits remain to be elucidated. Beta band oscillations have been suggested to be related to motor performance, but whether they relate to motor-inhibitory control remains unclear. This study is aimed at systematically investigating the relationship between beta band oscillations and motor-inhibitory control to determine whether beta band oscillations were related to the ability of motor-inhibitory control. We studied 30 healthy young adults (age: 21.6 ± 1.5 years). Stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) was derived from stop signal task, indicating the ability of motor-inhibitory control. Resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded for 12 min. Beta band power and functional connectivity (including global efficiency) were calculated. Correlations between beta band oscillations and SSRT were performed. Beta band EEG power in left and right motor cortex (MC), right somatosensory cortex (SC), and right inferior frontal cortex (IFC) was positively correlated with SSRT (P's = 0.031, 0.021, 0.045, and 0.015, respectively). Beta band coherence between bilateral MC, SC, and IFC was also positively correlated with SSRT (P's < 0.05). Beta band global efficiency was positively correlated with SSRT (P = 0.01). This is the first study to investigate the relationship between resting-state cortical beta oscillations and response inhibition. Our findings revealed that individuals with better ability of motor inhibitory control tend to have less cortical beta band power and functional connectivity. This study has clinical significance on the underlying mechanisms of motor inhibitory control deficits.

Effect of different sport environments on proactive and reactive motor inhibition: A study on open- and closed-skilled athletes via mouse-tracking procedure.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of different sport environments (open-and closed-skill sports) on proactive and reactive inhibitory processes as two distinct components of motor inhibition. A mouse-tracking procedure was employed to compare behavioral performance among three groups of participants (tennis players, swimmers and non-athletes) in non-sport-specific cued Go/No-Go (GNG) and Stop Signal Task (SST), which mainly engage proactive and reactive inhibitory control, respectively. Reaction times (RTs), inhibitory failures, and Stop Signal Reaction Times (SSRTs) were measured. To investigate dynamic aspects of inhibitory control, movement trajectories classified as one-shot (absence of trajectory alteration reflected in a steep slope) or non-one-shot (non-linear/multipeaked trajectory, with one or multiple corrections) were analyzed and compared among groups. Results showed no group differences in RTs in Go/No-Go and Stop conditions. SSRTs were significant shorter for the athletes than non-athletes in SST, but no differences emerged for inhibitory failures in cued GNG. During inhibitory failures athletes showed higher proportion of non-one-shot movements than non-athletes. Higher proportion of non-one-shot profiles was observed in cued GNG compared to SST. Finally, no differences between open-and closed-skilled athletes were found in both tasks. Our findings suggest that both proactive and reactive inhibitory controls do benefit from sport practice, but open-and closed-skill sports do not differ in influencing inhibitory processes. Movement profile analysis could be a promising, complementary behavioral analysis to integrate for more fine-grained evaluation and differentiation of inhibitory motor control in athletes, specifically when using GNG tasks.

The effect of sex, age and boldness on inhibitory control

Inhibitory control requires an individual to suppress impulsive actions in favour of more appropriate behaviours to gain a delayed reward. It plays an important role in activities such as foraging and initiating mating, but high within-species variation suggests that some individuals have greater inhibitory control than others. A standard index of inhibitory control used in many taxa is measuring how long an animal persists in trying to move itself or an appendage (e.g. its hand) through a transparent barrier to reach a reward. Although recent nonhuman studies have investigated how different factors are associated with variation in inhibitory control, these studies have rarely considered how these factors interact. Here we investigated how sex, age, personality (boldness) and the type of reward stimulus interact to predict the degree of motor inhibitory control in eastern mosquitofish, Gambusia holbrooki . We measured inhibitory control using a standard detour assay, ‘boldness’ (time to emergence in a novel environment), and the rate of learning. There were three different reward stimuli: a shoal of females, a shoal of males or a mixed-sex shoal. Individuals were tested in four consecutive trials, always with the same reward type, to quantify short-term learning. These measures were repeated at 7, 14 and 21 weeks after maturation to examine the effect of age. Females had significantly greater inhibitory control than males. Regardless of sex, older fish had significantly greater inhibitory control than younger fish, and boldness predicted learning ability. The type of reward stimuli had no sex-specific effect on inhibitory control. We discuss the biological significance of these sources of variation in inhibitory control, and the importance of accounting for them in studies examining individual differences in cognitive abilities. • Inhibitory control (IC) suppresses impulsive actions in favour of delayed rewards. • Both sex and age, but not their interaction, affected IC in 251 mosquitofish. • Individual's boldness did not affect IC, but bolder fish were faster learners. • Composition of a social reward (males/females/mixed) did not affect IC.

A novel approach to examine motor inhibitory control during voluntary gait initiation in young and older adults

A novel approach to examine motor inhibitory control during voluntary gait initiation in young and older adults

Anticipatory vowel coarticulation in child versus adult speech and a model of developmental change

There is by now extensive evidence to suggest that coarticulatory domains are at least as large in children’s speech as in adults’ speech. A series of four experiments that investigated the temporal domain of anticipatory vowel articulation in speech elicited from school-aged children and college-aged adults under different conditions (random elicitation, repetitive elicitation, spontaneous speech) confirms previous findings and suggests a new one: anticipatory cues to an upcoming vowel ramp up more quickly in adult’s speech compared to children’s speech. Both the established and new findings can be modeled with reference to the windows that govern path selection in perceptual-motor space. Specifically, the findings are modeled as a developmental decrease in the size of a lookback window, to be interpreted as a developmental increase in inhibitory motor control. [Work supported by NIH under grant R01HD087452.]

Neural correlates of expectations-induced effects of caffeine intake on executive functions

Placebo effects are defined as the beneficial subjective or behavioral outcomes of an intervention that are not attributable to its inherent properties; Placebo effects thus follow from individuals’ expectations about the effects of the intervention. The present study aimed at examining how expectations influence neurocognitive processes.We addressed this question by contrasting three double-blinded within-subjects experimental conditions in which participants were given decaffeinated coffee, while being told they had received caffeinated (condition i) or decaffeinated coffee (ii), and given caffeinated coffee while being told they had received decaffeinated coffee (iii).After each of these three interventions, performance and electroencephalogram was recorded at rest as well as during sustained attention Rapid Visual Information Processing task (RVIP) and a Go/NoGo motor inhibitory control task.We first aimed to confirm previous findings for caffeine-induced enhancement on these executive components and on their associated electrophysiological indexes (The Attention-P3 component, response conflict NoGo-N2 and inhibition NoGo-P3 components (ii vs iii contrast); and then to test the hypotheses that expectations also induce these effects (i vs ii), although with a weaker amplitude (i vs iii).We did not confirm any of our hypotheses for caffeine-induced behavioral improvements and thus did not test the effect of caffeine-related expectations. At the electrophysiological level, however, we confirmed that caffeine increased the Attention-P3 and NoGo-P3 components amplitude but did not confirm an effect on the response-conflict N2 component. We did not confirm that expectations influence any of the investigated electrophysiological indices, but we confirmed that the Attention-P3 Global Field Power values were larger for the caffeine compared to the expectations conditions.We conclude that previously identified behavioral effect size of caffeine and of the related expectations for sustained attention and inhibitory control may have been overestimated, and that caffeine primarily influences the cognitive processes and brain areas supporting attention allocation. Finally, we confirm that caffeine-related expectations induce smaller effects than the substance itself.

Compromised reactive but intact proactive inhibitory motor control in Tourette disorder

Tourette disorder (TD) is characterized by tics, which are sudden repetitive involuntary movements or vocalizations. Deficits in inhibitory control in TD patients remain inconclusive from the traditional method of estimating the ability to stop an impending action, which requires careful interpretation of a metric derived from race model. One possible explanation for these inconsistencies is that race model’s assumptions of independent and stochastic rise of GO and STOP process to a fixed threshold are often violated, making the classical metric to assess inhibitory control less robust. Here, we used a pair of metrics derived from a recent alternative model to address why stopping performance in TD is unaffected despite atypical neural circuitry. These new metrics distinguish between proactive and reactive inhibitory control and estimate them separately. When these metrics in adult TD group were contrasted with healthy controls (HC), we identified robust deficits in reactive control, but not in proactive control in TD. The TD group exhibited difficulty in slowing down the speed of movement preparation, which they rectified by their intact ability to postpone the movement.

Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) Over the Primary Motor Cortex (M1) Enhances Motor Response Inhibition and Visual Recognition Memory

BackgroundTranscranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain modulatory technique that can boost cognitive processes and alter performance in cognitive tasks. The effect of anodal-tDCS on cognitive functions following a single session has been repeatedly reported. However, results are varied, mixed, and confounded by several factors, including differences in tDCS current intensity and sham conditions used. Therefore, we assessed the effect of a single session of anodal-tDCS over the primary motor cortex (M1) on cognitive functions, particularly response inhibitory control and visual recognition memory, in healthy adults.Material/MethodsThirty healthy male subjects participated in a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled tDCS study (2 mA, for 20 min). In the sham stimulation, subjects received the same intensity (2 mA, for 30 s, ramped up, then ramped down). We assessed the cognitive functions response inhibitory control and visual recognition memory using the stop signal task (SST) and pattern recognition memory (PRM) task before and after the stimulation.ResultsThere was a statistically significant difference in cognitive function as assessed by the stop signal task go trial (SST) (P=0.019) and SST correct response time on go trials (P=0.04) after real stimulation only. There was no significant effect observed in sham condition.ConclusionsThe findings suggest that anodal-tDCS applied over M1 improves inhibitory control and visual recognition memory compared to sham stimulation. Thus, application of anodal-tDCS to the M1, as an integral node in inhibitory motor control, might be a promising adjuvant therapeutic intervention for modulation of motor response inhibition.

Detecting Cognitive Impairment in Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension Using Ocular Motor and Neuropsychological Testing.

Objective: To determine whether cognitive impairments in patients with Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIH) are correlated with changes in visual processing, weight, waist circumference, mood or headache, and whether they change over time.Methods: Twenty-two newly diagnosed IIH patients participated, with a subset assessed longitudinally at 3 and 6 months. Both conventional and novel ocular motor tests of cognition were included: Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), Stroop Colour and Word Test (SCWT), Digit Span, California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT), prosaccade (PS) task, antisaccade (AS) task, interleaved antisaccade-prosaccade (AS-PS) task. Patients also completed headache, mood, and visual functioning questionnaires.Results: IIH patients performed more poorly than controls on the SDMT (p< 0.001), SCWT (p = 0.021), Digit Span test (p< 0.001) and CVLT (p = 0.004) at baseline, and generated a higher proportion of AS errors in both the AS (p< 0.001) and AS-PS tasks (p = 0.007). Further, IIH patients exhibited prolonged latencies on the cognitively complex AS-PS task (p = 0.034). While weight, waist circumference, headache and mood did not predict performance on any experimental measure, increased retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) was associated with AS error rate on both the block [F(3, 19)=3.22, B = 0.30, p = 0.022] and AS-PS task [F(3, 20) = 2.65, B = 0.363, p = 0.013]. Unlike ocular motor changes, impairments revealed on conventional tests of cognition persisted up to 6 months.Conclusion: We found multi-domain cognitive impairments in IIH patients that were unrelated to clinical characteristics. Marked ocular motor inhibitory control deficits were predicted by RNFL thickness but remained distinct from other cognitive changes, underscoring the significance of visual processing changes in IIH.

Learning and motor inhibitory control in crows and domestic chickens.

Cognitive abilities allow animals to navigate through complex, fluctuating environments. In the present study, we tested the performance of a captive group of eight crows, Corvus corone and 10 domestic chickens, Gallus gallus domesticus, in the cylinder task, as a test of motor inhibitory control and reversal learning as a measure of learning ability and behavioural flexibility. Four crows and nine chickens completed the cylinder task, eight crows and six chickens completed the reversal learning experiment. Crows performed better in the cylinder task compared with chickens. In the reversal learning experiment, species did not significantly differ in the number of trials until the learning criterion was reached. The performance in the reversal learning experiment did not correlate with performance in the cylinder task in chickens. Our results suggest crows to possess better motor inhibitory control compared with chickens. By contrast, learning performance in a reversal learning task did not differ between the species, indicating similar levels of behavioural flexibility. Interestingly, we describe notable individual differences in performance. We stress the importance not only to compare cognitive performance between species but also between individuals of the same species when investigating the evolution of cognitive skills.

Top-down Inhibitory Motor Control Is Preserved in Adults with Developmental Coordination Disorder

ABSTRACT Two paradigms were employed to disentangle information processing from executive motor inhibition in adults with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Choice Reaction and Stop Signal Tasks were compared between 13 adults fulfilling DSM-5 DCD criteria and 42 typically developing adults. Additional analyses included 16 probable DCD (pDCD) participants, who had motor difficulties but did not fulfil DSM-5 criteria. Analyses employed frequentist and Bayesian modeling. While DCD+pDCD showed slower reaction times and difficulty initiating Go responses, no impairments in Stop actions were found. These findings indicated no executive deficit in DCD, suggesting that previous results may be explained by inefficient information processing.

Proactive inhibition is not modified by deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease: An electrical neuroimaging study.

In predictable contexts, motor inhibitory control can be deployed before the actual need for response suppression. The brain functional underpinnings of proactive inhibition, and notably the role of basal ganglia, are not entirely identified. We investigated the effects of deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus or internal globus pallidus on proactive inhibition in patients with Parkinson's disease. They completed a cued go/no‐go proactive inhibition task ON and (unilateral) OFF stimulation while EEG was recorded. We found no behavioural effect of either subthalamic nucleus or internal globus pallidus deep brain stimulation on proactive inhibition, despite a general improvement of motor performance with subthalamic nucleus stimulation. In the non‐operated and subthalamic nucleus group, we identified periods of topographic EEG modulation by the level of proactive inhibition. In the subthalamic nucleus group, source estimation analysis suggested the initial involvement of bilateral frontal and occipital areas, followed by a right lateralized fronto‐basal network, and finally of right premotor and left parietal regions. Our results confirm the overall preservation of proactive inhibition capacities in both subthalamic nucleus and internal globus pallidus deep brain stimulation, and suggest a partly segregated network for proactive inhibition, with a preferential recruitment of the indirect pathway.