Response inhibition on the stop signal task improves during cardiac contraction

Abstract

Motor actions can be facilitated or hindered by psychophysiological states of readiness, to guide rapid adaptive action. Cardiovascular arousal is communicated by cardiac signals conveying the timing and strength of individual heartbeats. Here, we tested how these interoceptive signals facilitate control of motor impulsivity. Participants performed a stop signal task, in which stop cues were delivered at different time points within the cardiac cycle: at systole when the heart contracts (T-wave peak, approximately 300 ms following the R-wave), or at diastole between heartbeats (R-wave peak). Response inhibition was better at systole, indexed by a shorter stop signal reaction time (SSRT), and longer stop signal delay (SSD). Furthermore, parasympathetic control of cardiovascular tone, and subjective sensitivity to interoceptive states, predicted response inhibition efficiency, although these cardiovascular and interoceptive correlations did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. This suggests that response inhibition capacity is influenced by interoceptive physiological cues, such that people are more likely to express impulsive actions during putative states of lower cardiovascular arousal, when frequency and strength of cardiac afferent signalling is reduced.

Interoceptive accuracy predicts nonplanning trait impulsivity

“…Moreover, activation of the right anterior insula and middle frontal cortex during stop as compared to go trials of the stop signal task, an index of prepotent response inhibition, negatively correlates with motor and nonplanning impulsivity scores (Farr, Hu, Zhang, & Li, 2012). Furthermore, response inhibition on the stop signal task is improved during momentary states of cardiovascular arousal when the heart contracts (Rae et al, 2018), suggesting a critical role of insula function in impulsivity. Noteworthy, apart from insular cortex, other areas such as somatosensory cortex or inferior frontal gyrus have been implicated in interoceptive abilities (e.g., Adolfi et al, 2017;Pollatos, Schandry, Auer, & Kaufmann, 2007) as well as impulsive behaviors (e.g., Deng et al, 2017;Rae, Hughes, Weaver, Anderson, & Rowe, 2014;Zhang et al, 2015), suggesting further areas of functional overlap between impulsivity and interoception.…”

Impact of cardiac interoception cues on voluntary decisions to make or withhold action in an intentional inhibition task

“…In the domain of reactive response inhibition, we previously found that stopping efficiency, as measured by stop signal reaction times on the stop signal task, was enhanced if the stop cues were presented at cardiac systole (Rae et al, 2018). Here, we extend this observation from reactive motor inhibition to examine the volitional withholding of actions, i.e.…”

“…Physiological signals from the body influence emotion, cognition, and action (Damasio, 1996;Garfinkel & Critchley, 2016;Tsakiris & Critchley, 2016). This includes heartbeats, which can cue more efficient response inhibition (Rae et al, 2018). We tested whether these effects extend to intentional inhibition, in which participants choose whether to act, or to withhold movements, with Choose cues presented at either cardiac systole or diastole.…”

“…By employing a modified Go/NoGo task, it was possible to simultaneously investigate the impact of cardiac cycle on reactive inhibition within the same participants. This provides a complementary investigation to our previous study employing the stop signal task (Rae et al, 2018), since NoGo trials require participants to withhold a prepotent response, while stop signal trials require participants to cancel an action that has already been initiated. In contrast to our previous finding that reactive inhibition on the stop signal task is improved during systole, here we found no evidence for a similar effect on NoGo inhibition.…”

“…The task was combined with online dynamic monitoring of participants' electrocardiograms (ECG), to deliver the onset of each trial at either cardiac systole or diastole. Given the facilitatory effect of systole on reactive response inhibition in the stop signal task (Rae et al, 2018), and the long-held view that heartbeats may broadly invoke inhibitory processes across behavioural domains (Lacey & Lacey, 1978), we predicted that heartbeats would similarly facilitate intentional inhibition, such that participants would choose to withhold button presses more frequently during systole than diastole.…”