Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 6, 2025
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Online Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Protocol for Measuring Cortical Physiology Associated with Response Inhibition
Published on: February 8, 2018
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Multiple insular-prefrontal pathways underlie perception to execution during response inhibition in humans
Takahiro Osada1, Koji Nakajima2,3, Tomohiko Shirokoshi2,3
1Department of Neurophysiology, Juntendo University School of Medicine, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan. tosada@juntendo.ac.jp.
Nature Communications
|December 3, 2024
Summary
Understanding response inhibition requires mapping brain circuits. This study reveals a sequential pathway involving visual cortex, insula, and frontal cortex, crucial for stopping actions.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neuroimaging
Background:
- Response inhibition is critical for goal-directed behavior.
- The precise neural circuits for inhibiting prepotent responses remain incompletely understood.
- Investigating these circuits requires whole-brain approaches combining multiple methodologies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To elucidate the macroscopic cerebral circuits underlying human response inhibition.
- To investigate the interplay between brain regions during the process of stopping an initiated action.
- To determine the causal relationships between key brain regions involved in response inhibition.
Main Methods:
- Utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for whole-brain analysis.
- Employed transcranial ultrasound stimulation and time-resolved magnetic stimulation for causal inference.
- Combined neuroimaging and brain stimulation techniques to map neural pathways.
Main Results:
- Identified a sequential four-step processing pathway: primary visual cortex (V1) → dorsal anterior insula (daINS) → ventral posterior inferior frontal cortex (vpIFC) / anterior inferior frontal cortex (aIFC) → basal ganglia (BG)/primary motor cortex (M1).
- Demonstrated causal influence of daINS on vpIFC.
- Revealed unidirectional dependence of aIFC on vpIFC, highlighting asymmetric insular-prefrontal pathways.
Conclusions:
- The study outlines a macroscopic cerebral circuit for response inhibition: V1→daINS→vpIFC/aIFC→BG/M1.
- Asymmetric information flow exists within the insular-prefrontal cortex during response inhibition.
- These findings advance our understanding of the neural basis of inhibitory control.
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