The role of the right presupplementary motor area in stopping action: two studies with event-related transcranial magnetic stimulation

Abstract

The role of the right presupplementary motor area in stopping action: two studies with event-related transcranial magnetic stimulation. J Neurophysiol 108: 380 -389, 2012. First published April 18, 2012 doi:10.1152/jn.00132.2012.-Rapidly stopping action engages a network in the brain including the right presupplementary motor area (preSMA), the right inferior frontal gyrus, and the basal ganglia. Yet the functional role of these different regions within the overall network still remains unclear. Here we focused on the role of the right preSMA in behavioral stopping. We hypothesized that the underlying neurocognitive function of this region is one or more of setting up a stopping rule in advance, modulating response tendencies (e.g., slowing down in anticipation of stopping), and implementing stopping when the stop signal occurs. We performed two experiments with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided, event-related, transcranial magnetic stimulation(TMS), during the performance of variants of the stop signal task. In experiment 1 we show that stimulation of the right preSMA versus vertex (control site) slowed the implementation of stopping (measured via stop signal reaction time) but had no influence on modulation of response tendencies. In experiment 2, we showed that stimulation of the right preSMA slowed implementation of stopping in a mechanistically selective form of stopping but had no influence on setting up stopping rules. The results go beyond the replication of prior findings by showing that TMS of the right preSMA impairs stopping behavior (including a behaviorally selective form of stopping) through a specific disruption of the implementation of stopping. Future studies are required to establish whether this was due to stimulation of the right preSMA itself or because of remote effects on the wider stopping network.

Specific proactive and generic reactive inhibition

“…Whereas the studies discussed above used prolonged TMS that preceded the task, Cai et al (2012) demonstrated that also event-related TMS (dual-pulse shortly after the go stimulus) directed at preSMA resulted in longer SSRTs. Using prolonged TMS, Watanabe et al (2015) showed again that the low-frequency variety impaired stopping, whereas the high-frequency variety (known to generally boost neural functioning) actually improved it.…”

Roles of the pre-SMA and rIFG in conditional stopping revealed by transcranial magnetic stimulation

“…We applied reversible disruption to the right pre-SMA and the rIFG separately by using offline transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to examine how participants' performance in the conditional stop-signal task would be affected as a result of the temporary perturbation of neural activity in the two regions. TMS has been shown to impair performance on a stop-signal task as indicated by an elevated SSRT when it was applied over the pre-SMA [10,37] and over the rIFG [8,7]. Specifically, we wanted to compare the TMS effect on performance in the high-and low-slowing participants.…”

Early attentional processes distinguish selective from global motor inhibitory control: An electrical neuroimaging study

“…Supporting that global inhibition mechanisms are not only involved when all motor responses must be suppressed but also for selective inhibitory control, Badry et al (2009) observed a reduced motor evoked potentials of leg muscles in successful stop trials during a manual Stop Signal Task (SST; see also e.g. Cai et al, 2012or Macdonald et al, 2012 for supporting data).…”