Trends in Neurosciences
Feature ReviewPhysiological Markers of Motor Inhibition during Human Behavior
Section snippets
Multiple Forms of Motor Inhibition during Human Behavior
Behaving in a goal-directed manner often requires suppressing inappropriate movement tendencies 1, 2, 3. As such, many daily-life situations demand that humans refrain from acting in an automatic, stimulus-driven manner, subjugate internal desires that interfere with long-term plans (e.g., eating unhealthy food or drinking too much alcohol), or interrupt ongoing actions that are no longer appropriate (e.g., aborting a foot movement towards the accelerator when a pedestrian suddenly runs into
Motor Inhibition Associated with Action Stopping
We frequently encounter situations in which a motor action, once initiated, becomes unnecessary or inappropriate. Imagine sitting in your car at an intersection and the traffic light has just turned green. You begin to shift your foot from the brake to the accelerator when, suddenly, a pedestrian runs into the street. Fortunately, you are able to quickly update your action plan, aborting the movement towards the accelerator. While this may be an extreme example of the importance of inhibitory
Motor Inhibition Associated with Action Preparation
In the stop signal task, the experimenter introduces an explicit tension between implementing and aborting a planned action. At the behavioral level, there is an obvious need for inhibition, and at the neural level, we can measure the rapid attenuation of excitability in the corticospinal pathway. However, action stopping represents just one situation requiring inhibitory control. Many inappropriate behaviors have also been associated with a lack of inhibitory control in the context of action
Shared Motor Inhibition for Action Preparation and Action Stopping
Intriguingly, both action preparation and action stopping appear to recruit processes that can produce inhibition that is either focal or broad, depending on task demands. In the context of action stopping, the influence of these two inhibitory forms appears to depend on whether the emphasis is on speed or selectivity of stopping, respectively. During action preparation, the contribution of these inhibitory processes may also vary according to the complexity of the task and to whether a
Concluding Remarks
Prominent signatures of inhibition are observed from probes of corticospinal excitability during human motor behavior. In some conditions, these inhibitory effects are focal, limited to task-relevant motor representations. However, in many conditions, the inhibitory effects are broad, evident in task-irrelevant muscles. The broadest effect is found when an ongoing action must be rapidly aborted; in this context, inhibition appears to be observed across the motor system. The widespread nature of
Acknowledgments
J.D. was supported by grants from the ‘Fonds Spéciaux de Recherche’ (FSR) of the Université catholique de Louvain, the Belgian National Funds for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS: MIS F.4512.14) and the ‘Fondation Médicale Reine Elisabeth’ (FMRE). R.B.I. was supported by grants from the National Institute of Health (NS097480, NS074917, NS092079). We are thankful to Julien Grandjean and Emmanuelle Wilhelm for their valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
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