Changes in BOLD variability are linked to the development of variable response inhibition

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Human response inhibition development research primarily examines average performance.
• Intra-individual variability in stopping performance and its neural basis are understudied.
• Understanding developmental variability is crucial for developmental science.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate age-related changes in intra-individual response inhibition performance variability.
• To examine developmental changes in the variability of underlying brain signals during response inhibition.
• To explore the relationship between behavioral and neural variability in response inhibition.

Main Methods:

• A study involving 45 participants (19 children aged 10-12, 26 adults aged 18-26).
• Utilized a stop-signal task to assess response inhibition.
• Analyzed intra-individual variability in stopping performance and brain signal variability during successful stopping.

Main Results:

• No significant difference in average stopping performance between children and adults.
• Children exhibited greater variability in stop-signal latencies compared to adults.
• Adults showed significantly higher brain signal variability during successful stopping, particularly in the thalamus and inhibition network regions.
• Neural signal variability correlated with behavioral variability in adults.

Conclusions:

• Response inhibition performance variability decreases with age, while neural variability in the inhibition network increases from childhood to adulthood.
• Variability measures, both neural and behavioral, may offer greater sensitivity to developmental differences in response inhibition than average-based metrics.
• Future research should explore the causal link between developmental changes in neural variability and behavioral variability.