Related Experiment Videos
Right inferior prefrontal cortex mediates response inhibition while mesial prefrontal cortex is responsible for error
Katya Rubia1, Anna B Smith, Michael J Brammer
1Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK. k.rubia@iop.kcl.ac.uk
Neuroimage
|October 7, 2003
Summary
This study isolated brain activity during inhibitory control using a challenging stop task. Successful inhibition was linked to the right inferior prefrontal cortex, while inhibition failure activated other regions.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Inhibitory control and error detection are crucial self-monitoring functions.
- Previous neuroimaging studies struggled to isolate inhibitory motor control from other cognitive processes.
- Existing tasks often confound inhibition with attention, decision-making, and error detection.
Purpose of the Study:
- To isolate brain activation specifically related to successful inhibitory control and inhibition failure.
- To develop a challenging stop task that minimizes confounding non-inhibitory cognitive functions.
- To precisely map neural correlates of motor response inhibition and error detection.
Main Methods:
- Utilized rapid, mixed-trial, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
- Employed a challenging, individually adjusted stop task where participants succeeded on 50% of trials.
- Controlled for non-inhibitory functions like selective attention and decision-making.
Main Results:
- Successful inhibitory control was associated with activation in the right inferior prefrontal cortex.
- Failure to inhibit a motor response correlated with activation in mesial frontopolar and bilateral inferior parietal cortices.
- These latter activations may reflect an attention network involved in error detection.
Conclusions:
- The right inferior prefrontal cortex plays a key role in successful motor response inhibition.
- Mesial frontopolar and bilateral inferior parietal cortices are implicated in error detection following inhibition failure.
- This study successfully disentangled neural activity for inhibition and error detection using an adaptive task design.