Proactive Control Strategies for Overt and Covert Go/NoGo Tasks: An Electrical Neuroimaging Study

Abstract

Proactive and reactive inhibition are generally intended as mechanisms allowing the withholding or suppression of overt movements. Nonetheless, inhibition could also play a pivotal role during covert actions (i.e., potential motor acts not overtly performed, despite the activation of the motor system), such as Motor Imagery (MI). In a previous EEG study, we analyzed cerebral activities reactively triggered during two cued Go/NoGo tasks, requiring execution or withholding of overt or covert imagined actions, respectively. This study revealed activation of pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), key nodes of the network underpinning reactive inhibition of overt responses in NoGo trials, also during MI enactment, enabling the covert nature of the imagined motor response. Taking into account possible proactive engagement of inhibitory mechanisms by cue signals, for an exhaustive interpretation of these previous findings in the present study we analyzed EEG activities elicited during the preparatory phase of our cued overt and covert Go/NoGo tasks. Our results demonstrate a substantial overlap of cerebral areas activated during proactive recruitment and subsequent reactive implementation of motor inhibition in both overt and covert actions; also, different involvement of pre-SMA and rIFG emerged, in accord with the intended type (covert or overt) of incoming motor responses. During preparation of the overt Go/NoGo task, the cue is encoded in a pragmatic mode, as it primes the possible overt motor response programs in motor and premotor cortex and, through preactivation of a pre-SMA-related decisional mechanism, it triggers a parallel preparation for successful response selection and/or inhibition during the response phase. Conversely, the preparatory strategy for the covert Go/NoGo task is centered on priming of an inhibitory mechanism in rIFG, tuned to the instructed covert modality of motor performance and instantiated during subsequent MI, which allows the imagined response to remain a potential motor act.

How context influences the interpretation of facial expressions: a source localization high-density EEG study on the “Kuleshov effect”

“…The outermost belt of electrodes of the sensor-net (19 peripheral channels: E43, E48, E49, E56, E63, E68, E73, E81, E88, E94, E99, E107, E113, E119, E120, E125, E126, E127, E128) was discarded due to their tendency to show residual muscular artefacts (Fig. 2) 29,48–50 . Bad channels were interpolated using a spherical interpolation method implemented in EEGLAB.…”

“…Pre-processed data for each participant was subsequently imported and analysed in Cartool software (version 3.55; http://brainmapping.unige.ch). To evaluate Face_1- and Face_2 - elicited ERPs, epochs from the onset of Face_1 and Face_2 up to 1200 ms were averaged across trials, separately for each participant and condition; these single-participant averages were then used to compute three group-averaged ERPs, one for each experimental condition (Fear, Happiness, and Neutral) 29,50 .…”

“…Only differences covering at least five adjacent electrodes within nine clusters (see Fig. 2) reaching the statistical significance level were retained 29,50 . In order to control for multiple comparisons, a point-wise paired randomization test was performed ( p < 0.01; 10 contiguous data point of temporal criterion) 48 .…”

Aproximación Neurodinámica a la Cognición Social

“…Lieberman (2010), propone que intentos explícitos de autocontrol suele activar una red cerebral que incluye la CPF lateral, CCAr, PreSMA y la CPFdm. Donde la CCA funcionaría como un sistema de detección de conflictos que indica la necesidad de autocontrol y su actividad comenzaría sobre los 300 ms (Angelini et al, 2016). Por otro lado, la corteza prefrontal ventrolateral CPFvl bilateral estaría más relacionada con el esfuerzo explícito de regulación emocional (Cohen J.…”

“…Por otro lado, la corteza prefrontal ventrolateral CPFvl bilateral estaría más relacionada con el esfuerzo explícito de regulación emocional (Cohen J. & Cols., 2011;Heatherton, 2011) y su actividad eléctrica sería más tardía (>450 ms) (Angelini et al, 2016). Diferentes investigaciones resaltan el papel de la CPFvl en la regulación emocional y conductual: pacientes con lesiones en la CPFvl tienden a hacer elecciones más arriesgadas en tareas de riesgo-recompensa (Bechara et al, 1994;Bechara, 2004); la CPFvl derecha está más relacionada con altas ganancias y mayor control de recompensas en juegos de cartas (Cohen et al, 2011); adultos con una mayor actividad en la CPFvl muestran menos signos de angustia ante situaciones de exclusión y rechazo social (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004;Eisenberger, Gable, & Lieberman, 2007); por último, en adolescentes maduran primero las regiones de recompensa (estriado ventral y CPFvm) que las de inhibición CPFvl y la CCAr, lo que conlleva a un incremento de las conductas de riesgo (van Leijenhorst & Crone, 2009;van Leijenhorst et al, 2010), efecto que se ve facilitado por la presencia de pares (Blakemore & Robbins, 2012) y la historia de rechazo social crónico durante la niñez (Peake et al, 2013).…”