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Updated: Nov 1, 2025
Intracortical Inhibition Within the Primary Motor Cortex Can Be Modulated by Changing the Focus of Attention
Published on: September 11, 2017
Electrophysiological correlates underlying interference control in motor tasks
L Sperl1, G G Ambrus2, J M Kaufmann3
1Department for the Psychology of Human Movement and Sport, Institute of Sports Science, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany; Department of General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany.
Abstract:
Changing pre-existing, automatized motor skills often requires interference control. Prepotent response inhibition - one subdimension of inhibition - has been theorized to be particularly associated with successful interference control in motor skills. Recent evidence suggests that different inhibition subdimensions elicit distinct ERP patterns (with larger P3 components for response inhibition). Therefore, we examined whether a similar ERP pattern would arise in a task demanding participants to overcome interference emerging from strong motor automatisms. This was realized within a typing paradigm involving a letter switch manipulation which is able to produce strong, immediate interference effects. Most importantly, stimulus-locked ERP analyses revealed an enhanced P3 component at frontal, central and most pronouncedly parietal sites for interference trials, in line with previous reported patterns for response inhibition. Together, different analyses provide first insights into the electrophysiological correlates of motor skill change, corroborating the pivotal role of response inhibition for successful interference control.
