Abstract
Recent human electrophysiological evidence implicated theta-band communication between the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) and frontal and parietal cortex in cognitive flexibility. Since the NAc is connected with the motor system, we tested whether phase and amplitude-based NAc-cortical connectivity and power modulation likewise underlie flexibility in motor action control. We combined concurrently recorded intracranial and extracranial electroencephalograms from seven psychiatric patients implanted with deep brain stimulation electrodes who performed a stop signal task. Inhibition success – as opposed to failure – was associated with greater pre-stimulus information flow from right NAc to medial frontal cortex through phase coupling of theta oscillations. Inhibition failure evoked theta power increases in the left NAc and medial frontal cortex, whereas parieto-occipital cortex showed an alpha power decrease. We conclude that NAc-to-frontal theta connectivity, possibly facilitating processing of task-relevant information, and alpha and theta power modulations, possibly reflecting post-error engagement of cognitive control, contribute to adaptive behavior pertaining motor control.
Significance statement Combining unique intracranial recordings from human nucleus accumbens and concurrently recorded electroencephalographic data, we complement previous research on the involvement of nucleus accumbens-cortical theta-band communication in adaptive behavior by showing that pre-stimulus theta phase synchronization likely drives this process.
- cortico-striatal connectivity
- electroencephalography (EEG)
- intracranial EEG (iEEG)
- spectral power
- stop signal task
- theta oscillations
Footnotes
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
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