Response inhibition and psychopathology: A meta-analysis of go/no-go task performance.

Abstract

Response inhibition, defined as the ability to withhold a response, is considered to be a core deficit in various mental illnesses. Measures of response inhibition have been used to define functional deficits, as markers of genetic risk, in neuroimaging studies, and for diagnostic purposes in these disorders. However, the magnitude of the deficit across psychopathologies has not been systematically assessed. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of performance on commonly used measures of the ability to withhold a response: go/no-go task, Conners' continuous performance task (CCPT), and sustained attention to response task (SART). The primary variable of interest in each of these tasks was commission errors (CE), which provides an index of one's ability to correctly withhold a response. In addition, we examined omission errors (OE) which are an index of sustained attention; and mean reaction time (RT; MRT). Three-hundred and 18 studies in 11 different psychiatric disorders met inclusion criteria. Weighted mean effect sizes (ESs) were calculated to measure the magnitude of the deficit. In general, we found low-to-medium ESs for commission errors ranging from g = -0.10 for anxiety disorder to medium ESs of g = 0.52 for bipolar disorder. Small-to-medium deficits in withholding were found in various disorders. Results indicate that deficits in withholding are insufficiently sensitive or specific to be used individually as a diagnostic measure or biomarker in most disorders.

Inferior frontal cortex activity is modulated by reward sensitivity and performance variability

“…However, this deficit might be subtle given that the accuracy levels in the no-go trials were not associated with SR scores. Although this lack of association between reward sensitivity and No-go accuracy is contrary to what we expected, a recent meta-analysis has shown that omission errors, rather than commission errors, characterize the performance pattern of several psychopathologies, including ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, reading disorder and schizophrenia (Wright, Lipszyc, Dupuis, Thayapararajah, & Schachar, 2014). This deficit is not specific of any disorder, but is a shared feature that may reflect lapses in focused attention.…”

Neural impact of low-level alcohol use on response inhibition: An fMRI investigation in young adults

“…Given that other parts of the world have different legal drinking ages and the suggestion that underage illegal drinking may be more strongly associated with impulsivity than legal drinking, it is important to mention that all participants in the current study were of legal drinking age for this province/country. The Go/No-Go task is a well-established fMRI compatible measure of response inhibition in which participants are initially required to respond to a stimulus, thus creating a strong cued tendency to respond, which is followed by withholding response to the conditioned stimulus (Wright et al, 2014). In healthy adult controls, the Go/No-Go task has been shown to be dependent on activation of the anterior cingulate, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal cortex, inferior parietal lobule, premotor cortex, thalamus, and the caudate using fMRI (Dosenbach et al, 2008;Longo et al, 2013;Stevens et al, 2009).…”

Understanding Within-Session Loss-Chasing: An Experimental Investigation of the Impact of Stake Size on Cognitive Control

“…Specifically, response inhibition could be conceptualised as the process of not attenuating to a strongly conditioned cue (Wright et al 2014). Poor response inhibition performance, often referred to as 'behavioural disinhibition', demonstrates an inability to restrain a response that is no longer adaptive, or at least no longer appropriate (Strakowski et al 2009;Winstanley et al 2006).…”

“…Response inhibition performance was recorded via a modified version of the classical go/ no-go task (Fillmore 2003), which is a measure of ability to withhold a prepotent response as well as attention, vigilance and reaction time (Wright et al 2014). Participants were presented with directional arrows, pointing either left or right, on a computer screen, for a period of 1500 ms, with each arrow cued by a fixation point for a duration of 500 ms.…”

“…The mean percentage of commission errors, where participants did not withhold the prepotent response, was recorded as measure of response inhibition performance. In addition, the mean percentage of omission trials, where participants failed to respond correctly to the directional arrow presented, and mean response time were also measured, as indicators of attention and vigilance respectively (Wright et al 2014). …”