Response control networks are selectively modulated by attention to rare events and memory load regardless of the need for inhibition

Inhibition, Shifting and Updating: Inter and intra-domain commonalities and differences from an executive functions activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis

Executive functions are higher-order mental processes that support goal-directed behavior. Among these processes, Inhibition, Updating, and Shifting have been considered core executive domains. In this meta-analysis, we comprehensively investigate the neural networks of these executive domains and we synthesize for the first time the neural convergences and divergences among the most frequently used executive paradigms within those domains. A systematic search yielded 1055 published neuroimaging studies (including 26,191 participants in total). Our study revealed that a fronto-parietal network was shared by the three main domains. Furthermore, we executed conjunction analyses among the paradigms of the same domain to extract the core distinctive components of the main executive domains. This approach showed that Inhibition and Shifting are characterized by a strongly lateralized neural activation in the right and left hemisphere, respectively. In addition, both networks overlapped with the Updating network but not with each other. Remarkably, our study detected heterogeneity among the paradigms from the same domain. More specifically, analysis of Inhibition tasks revealed differing activations for Response Inhibition compared to Interference Control paradigms, suggesting that Inhibition encompasses relatively heterogeneous sub-functions. Shifting analyses revealed a bilateral overlap of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task with the Updating network, but this pattern was absent for Rule Switching and Dual Task paradigms. Moreover, our Updating meta-analyses revealed the neural signatures associated with the specific modules of the Working Memory model from Baddeley and Hitch. To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive meta-analysis of executive functions to date. Its paradigm-driven analyses provide a unique contribution to a better understanding of the neural convergences and divergences among executive processes that are relevant for clinical applications, such as cognitive enhancement and neurorehabilitation interventions.

The neural correlates of inhibitory control in 10-month-old infants: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

Inhibitory control, a core executive function, emerges in infancy and develops rapidly across childhood. Methodological limitations have meant that studies investigating the neural correlates underlying inhibitory control in infancy are rare. Employing functional near-infrared spectroscopy alongside a novel touchscreen task that measures response inhibition, this study aimed to uncover the neural underpinnings of inhibitory control in 10-month-old infants (N = 135). We found that when inhibition was required, the right prefrontal and parietal cortices were more activated than when there was no inhibitory demand. This demonstrates that inhibitory control in infants as young as 10 months of age is supported by similar brain areas as in older children and adults. With this study we have lowered the age-boundary for localising the neural substrates of response inhibition to the first year of life.

Neural correlates and role of medication in reactive motor impulsivity in Tourette disorder

Abnormality of inhibitory control is considered to be a potential cognitive marker of tics in Tourette disorder (TD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and impulse control disorders. The results of the studies on inhibitory control in TD showed discrepant results. The aim of the present study was to assess reactive inhibitory control in adult TD patients with and without antipsychotic medication, and under emotional stimulation (visual images with positive, neutral and negative content). We assessed 31 unmedicated and 19 medicated TD patients and 26 matched healthy controls using the stop signal task as an index of reactive motor impulsivity and emotional stimulation with the aim to increase impulsivity. We performed a multimodal neuroimaging analysis using a regions of interest approach on grey matter signal, resting-state spontaneous brain activity and functional connectivity analyses. We found a higher reactive motor impulsivity in TD patients medicated with antipsychotics compared to unmedicated TD patients and controls. This propensity for reactive motor impulsivity in medicated TD patients was not influenced by ADHD or emotional stimulation. Neuroimaging results in medicated TD patients suggested that reactive motor impulsivity was underpinned by an increased grey matter signal from the right supplementary motor area and inferior frontal gyrus; decreased resting-state spontaneous activity of the left putamen; higher functional connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus and the superior temporal gyri (bilaterally); lower functional connectivity between the cerebellum and the right subthalamic nucleus. Taken together, our data suggested (i) a deficit in reactive motor impulsivity in TD patients medicated with atypical antipsychotics that was unrelated to ADHD and (ii) that motor impulsivity was underpinned by structures and by functional connectivity of the fronto-temporo-basal ganglia-cerebellar pathway.

Motor Action Execution in Reaction-Time Movements: Magnetoencephalographic Study

OBJECTIVE

Reaction-time movements are internally planned in the brain. Presumably, proactive control in reaction-time movements appears as an inhibitory phase preceding movement execution. We identified the brain activity of reaction-time movements in close proximity to movement onset and compared it with similar self-paced voluntary movements without external command.

DESIGN

We recorded 18 healthy participants performing reaction-time and self-paced fast index finger abductions with 306-sensor magnetoencephalography and electromyography. Reaction-time movements were performed as responses to cutaneous electrical stimulation delivered on the hand radial nerve area. Motor field and movement-evoked field 1 corresponding to the sensorimotor cortex activity during motor execution and afferent feedback after the movement were analyzed with Brainstorm's scouts using regions of interest analysis.

RESULTS

Primary motor and somato sensory cortices were active before and after movement onset. During reaction-time movements, primary motor and somato sensory cortices showed higher activation compared with self-paced movements. In primary motor cortex, stronger preparatory activity was seen in self-paced than in reaction time task.

CONCLUSIONS

Both primary motor and somato sensory cortices participated in the movement execution and in the prediction of sensory consequences of movement. Cutaneous stimulation facilitated cortical activation during motor field after reaction-time movements, implying the applicability of cutaneous stimulation in motor rehabilitation.

Task difficulty modulates age-related differences in the behavioral and neural bases of language production

Older adults typically show decline in a variety of cognitive functions including inhibitory control and language production, with corresponding age-related increases in fMRI activation. However, it remains unclear whether such increases are compensatory or whether they reflect neural decline. One factor that may influence these brain-behavior relationships is difficulty. The current study investigated the effect of difficulty on age-related differences in the behavioral and neural bases of language production and inhibitory control using a phonological Go/No-Go picture naming task. Task demands were manipulated by varying the proportion of naming trials (Go trials) and inhibition trials (No-Go trials) across runs. All participants showed task-difficulty related declines in behavioral performance and increases in fMRI activation. Behaviorally, older adults were more sensitive to task difficulty, and elicited more fMRI activation than younger adults. Older adults were less neurally responsive to additional task demands (i.e., picture naming alone vs. Go/No-Go picture naming), but interestingly showed similar within-task increases as younger adults (e.g., Go Bias vs. No-Go Bias). Moreover, the relationships between fMRI activation and behavioral performance in older adults were multifaceted and the strength of these relations changed as a function of task difficulty. Specifically, activation in pre- and post- central gyri, right supramarginal and angular gyri was negatively correlated with naming reaction times, suggesting that activation in these regions may help mitigate age-related declines in language production. These findings are partially consistent with the CRUNCH model, highlighting the important influence of task difficulty on older adults' behavioral performance and their patterns of fMRI activation during language production.

Neural Correlates of Response Inhibition in Early Childhood: Evidence From a Go/No-Go Task

We examined the neural correlates underlying response inhibition in early childhood. Five-year-old children completed a Go/No-go task with or without time pressure (Fast vs. Slow condition) while scalp EEG was recorded. On No-go trials where inhibition was required, the left frontal N2 and posterior P3 were enhanced relative to Go trials. Time pressure was detrimental to behavioral performance and modulated the early-occurring P1 component. The topography of ERPs related to response inhibition differed from patterns typically seen in adults, and may indicate a compensatory mechanism to make up for immature inhibition networks in children.

Segregating Top-Down Selective Attention from Response Inhibition in a Spatial Cueing Go/NoGo Task: An ERP and Source Localization Study

Successfully inhibiting a prepotent response tendency requires the attentional detection of signals which cue response cancellation. Although neuroimaging studies have identified important roles of stimulus-driven processing in the attentional detection, the effects of top-down control were scarcely investigated. In this study, scalp EEG was recorded from thirty-two participants during a modified Go/NoGo task, in which a spatial-cueing approach was implemented to manipulate top-down selective attention. We observed classical event-related potential components, including N2 and P3, in the attended condition of response inhibition. While in the ignored condition of response inhibition, a smaller P3 was observed and N2 was absent. The correlation between P3 and CNV during the foreperiod suggested an inhibitory role of P3 in both conditions. Furthermore, source analysis suggested that P3 generation was mainly localized to the midcingulate cortex, and the attended condition showed increased activation relative to the ignored condition in several regions, including inferior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, precentral gyrus, insula and uncus, suggesting that these regions were involved in top-down attentional control rather than inhibitory processing. Taken together, by segregating electrophysiological correlates of top-down selective attention from those of response inhibition, our findings provide new insights in understanding the neural mechanisms of response inhibition.

Testing the physiological plausibility of conflicting psychological models of response inhibition: A forward inference fMRI study

The neural mechanisms underlying response inhibition and related disorders are unclear and controversial for several reasons. First, it is a major challenge to assess the psychological bases of behaviour, and ultimately brain-behaviour relationships, of a function which is precisely intended to suppress overt measurable behaviours. Second, response inhibition is difficult to disentangle from other parallel processes involved in more general aspects of cognitive control. Consequently, different psychological and anatomo-functional models coexist, which often appear in conflict with each other even though they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The standard model of response inhibition in go/no-go tasks assumes that inhibitory processes are reactively and selectively triggered by the stimulus that participants must refrain from reacting to. Recent alternative models suggest that action restraint could instead rely on reactive but non-selective mechanisms (all automatic responses are automatically inhibited in uncertain contexts) or on proactive and non-selective mechanisms (a gating function by which reaction to any stimulus is prevented in anticipation of stimulation when the situation is unpredictable). Here, we assessed the physiological plausibility of these different models by testing their respective predictions regarding event-related BOLD modulations (forward inference using fMRI). We set up a single fMRI design which allowed for us to record simultaneously the different possible forms of inhibition while limiting confounds between response inhibition and parallel cognitive processes. We found BOLD dynamics consistent with non-selective models. These results provide new theoretical and methodological lines of inquiry for the study of basic functions involved in behavioural control and related disorders.

Distinctiveness Benefits Novelty (and Not Familiarity), but Only Up to a Limit: The Prior Knowledge Perspective

Novelty is a pivotal player in cognition, and its contribution to superior memory performance is a widely accepted convention. On the other hand, mnemonic advantages for familiar information are also well documented. Here, we examine the role of experimental distinctiveness as a potential explanation for these apparently conflicting findings. Across two experiments, we demonstrate that conceptual novelty, an unfamiliar combination of familiar constituents, is sensitive to its experimental proportions: Improved memory for novelty was observed when novel stimuli were relatively rare. Memory levels for familiar items, in contrast, were completely unaffected by experimental proportions, highlighting their insensitivity to list-based distinctiveness. Finally, no mnemonic advantage for conceptual novelty over familiarity was observed even when novel stimuli were extremely rare at study. Together, these results imply that novel and familiar items are processed via partially distinct mechanisms, with (at least some facets of) novelty not providing a mnemonic advantage over familiarity.

Model-based functional neuroimaging using dynamic neural fields: An integrative cognitive neuroscience approach

A fundamental challenge in cognitive neuroscience is to develop theoretical frameworks that effectively span the gap between brain and behavior, between neuroscience and psychology. Here, we attempt to bridge this divide by formalizing an integrative cognitive neuroscience approach using dynamic field theory (DFT). We begin by providing an overview of how DFT seeks to understand the neural population dynamics that underlie cognitive processes through previous applications and comparisons to other modeling approaches. We then use previously published behavioral and neural data from a response selection Go/Nogo task as a case study for model simulations. Results from this study served as the 'standard' for comparisons with a model-based fMRI approach using dynamic neural fields (DNF). The tutorial explains the rationale and hypotheses involved in the process of creating the DNF architecture and fitting model parameters. Two DNF models, with similar structure and parameter sets, are then compared. Both models effectively simulated reaction times from the task as we varied the number of stimulus-response mappings and the proportion of Go trials. Next, we directly simulated hemodynamic predictions from the neural activation patterns from each model. These predictions were tested using general linear models (GLMs). Results showed that the DNF model that was created by tuning parameters to capture simultaneously trends in neural activation and behavioral data quantitatively outperformed a Standard GLM analysis of the same dataset. Further, by using the GLM results to assign functional roles to particular clusters in the brain, we illustrate how DNF models shed new light on the neural populations' dynamics within particular brain regions. Thus, the present study illustrates how an interactive cognitive neuroscience model can be used in practice to bridge the gap between brain and behavior.

Isolating response inhibition in the brain: Parietal versus frontal contribution

Response inhibition is a main function of cognitive control and its neural substrates have been studied extensively. However, it is still a question whether previous brain imaging investigations were successful in isolating specific response inhibition activation. In the current study we attempted to pinpoint response inhibition in the brain using a Go/No-go task and fMRI, by contrasting rare-No-go trials with prevalent-No-go trials. Although inhibition is required in all No-go trials, task variants with rare-No-go cases (25%) create a prepotent response which elicits a strong demand for inhibition, while task variants with prevalent-No-go cases (75%) require very little inhibition effort. Since the neural activation in this design is extracted solely from No-go trials, differing only in the extent of inhibitory demand, the analysis avoids contamination of the data with motor effects or visual factors. Using this experimental design we highlight the contribution of the parietal cortex (bilaterally) to inhibitory processes, while casting doubts about the specificity of frontal activation in such processes. Future studies are required to verify that bilateral intraparietal sulcus and left temporo-parietal junction activations could be markers of inhibitory control.

A dual but asymmetric role of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in response inhibition and switching from a non-salient to salient action

Response inhibition and salience detection are among the most studied psychological constructs of cognitive control. Despite a growing body of work, how inhibition and salience processing interact and engage regional brain activations remains unclear. Here, we examined this issue in a stop signal task (SST), where a prepotent response needs to be inhibited to allow an alternative, less dominant response. Sixteen adult individuals performed two versions of the SST each with 25% (SST25) and 75% (SST75) of stop trials. We posited that greater regional activations to the infrequent trial type in each condition (i.e., to stop as compared to go trials in SST25 and to go as compared to stop trials in SST75) support salience detection. Further, successful inhibition in stop trials requires attention to the stop signal to trigger motor inhibition, and the stop signal reaction time (SSRT) has been used to index the efficiency of motor response inhibition. Therefore, greater regional activations to stop as compared to go success trials in association with the stop signal reaction time (SSRT) serve to expedite response inhibition. In support of an interactive role, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) increases activation to salience detection in both SST25 and SST75, but only mediates response inhibition in SST75. Thus, infrequency response in the dACC supports motor inhibition only when stopping has become a routine. In contrast, although the evidence is less robust, the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) increases activity to the infrequent stimulus and supports inhibition in both SST25 and SST75. These findings clarify a unique role of the dACC and add to the literature that distinguishes dACC and pre-SMA functions in cognitive control.