The P300 as marker of inhibitory control – fact or fiction?

Abstract

Inhibitory control, i.e., the ability to stop or suppress actions, thoughts, or memories, represents a prevalent and popular concept in basic and clinical neuroscience as well as psychology. At the same time, it is notoriously difficult to study as successful inhibition is characterized by the absence of a continuously quantifiable direct behavioral marker. It has been suggested that the P3 latency, and here especially its onset latency, may serve as neurophysiological marker of inhibitory control as it correlates with the stop signal reaction time (SSRT). The SSRT estimates the average stopping latency, which itself is unobservable since no overt response is elicited in successful stop trials, based on differences in the distribution of go reaction times and the delay of the stop-relative to the go-signal in stop trials.In a meta-analysis and an independent EEG experiment, we found that correlations between the P3-latency and the SSRT are indeed replicable, but also unspecific. Not only does the SSRT also correlate with the N2-latency, but both P3and N2-latency measures show similar or even higher correlations with other behavioral parameters such as the go reaction time or stopping accuracy. The missing specificity of P3-SSRT correlations, together with the general pattern of associations, suggests that these manifest effects are driven by underlying latent processes other than inhibition, such as those associated with the speed-accuracy trade-off. P3 and inhibitionHuster et al.3

Temporal cascade of frontal, motor and muscle processes underlying human action-stopping

“…While, one interpretation of this partial EMG activity is that it merely reflects 'weak' Go activation that did not run to completion (De Jong et al, 1990), several lines of evidence strongly suggest it is a muscle manifestation of the stopped response. First, CancelTime was positively correlated with SSRT Beh , similar to recent studies (Huster et al, 2019;Thunberg et al, 2019). Second, the variability of CancelTime was positively correlated with the variability of SSRT estimated from the BEESTS modeling framework.…”

“…Frontal Eye Field decrease activity in less than 10 ms before SSRT (Hanes et al, 1998), dopaminergic neurons in rodent substantia nigra and striatum increase activity only 12 ms before SSRT (Ogasawara et al, 2018), TMS at ~25 ms before SSRT over human Intraparietal Sulcus prolongs SSRT (Osada et al, 2019), and P300 human EEG activity ~300 ms after the Stop signal relates to the stopping latency (Wessel and Aron, 2015). Whereas the rather late timing of some of these results might be related to processes such as monitoring and feedback (Huster et al, 2019) as has been ascribed to brain signatures that modulate after SSRT (Logan et al, 2015;Schall and Boucher, 2007), our earlier latencies for prefrontal bursts, TMS-MEP and muscle…”

Stimulating stopping? Investigating the effects of tDCS over the inferior frontal gyri and visual cortices

“…While this corresponds to a large effect, it leaves much unexplained variance that could be driven by factors unique to each measure. Therefore, it seems reasonable to question the extent to which these markers should be used interchangeably as measures of inhibitory timing, a notion which is supported by recent work 48,49 . In sum, though, the correlational pattern suggests that while the different proposed stopping latency markers are not necessarily overlapping in time ( Figure 2), they are indeed related to each other as well as to general task processing as quantified by the go reaction times.…”

Differences in unity: the go/no-go and stop signal tasks rely on different inhibitory mechanisms

“…Data was collected from 37 participants (20 females, 17 males) between the age of 19 and 35 years (average age 26.8). The SST data is also used in Huster et al (2019). All participants were righthanded, reported no psychiatric or neurological disorders and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.…”

“…Further, Wessel (2017) manipulated the task parameters of the GNGT and found that the stop-related P3 was elicited in the GNGT only if the probability of no-go stimuli was low and the task pace was fast enough to evoke a prepotent response tendency. However, others have argued that the P3 appears too late to index a genuine inhibitory process (Filipović et al, 2000;Huster et al, 2019;Raud and Huster, 2017;Skippen et al, 2019). While the P3 onset is typically detected at around 200-300 ms, corticomotor excitability is reduced already at around 150 ms inhibitory signal onset (Coxon et al, 2006;Fujiyama et al, 2011;Hoshiyama et al, 1997Hoshiyama et al, , 1996Macdonald et al, 2014;van Campen et al, 2013;van den Wildenberg et al, 2010;Yamanaka et al, 2002).…”