A global pause generates nonselective response inhibition during selective stopping

Abstract

Selective response inhibition may be required when stopping a part of a multicomponent action. A persistent response delay (stopping-interference effect) indicates nonselective response inhibition during selective stopping. This study aimed to elucidate whether nonselective response inhibition is the consequence of a global pause process during attentional capture or specific to a nonselective cancel process during selective stopping. Twenty healthy human participants performed a bimanual anticipatory response inhibition paradigm with selective stop and ignore signals. Frontocentral and sensorimotor beta-bursts were recorded with electroencephalography. Corticomotor excitability and short-interval intracortical inhibition in primary motor cortex were recorded with transcranial magnetic stimulation. Behaviorally, responses in the non-signaled hand were delayed during selective ignore and stop trials. The response delay was largest during selective stop trials and indicated that stopping-interference could not be attributed entirely to attentional capture. A stimulus-nonselective increase in frontocentral beta-bursts occurred during stop and ignore trials. Sensorimotor response inhibition was reflected in maintenance of beta-bursts and short-interval intracortical inhibition relative to disinhibition observed during go trials. Response inhibition signatures were not associated with the magnitude of stopping-interference. Therefore, nonselective response inhibition during selective stopping results primarily from a nonselective pause process but does not entirely account for the stopping-interference effect.

Selective Cancellation of Reactive and Anticipated Movement: Differences in Speed of Action Reprogramming, but not Stopping

“…This provides the first physiological (EMG-based; CancelTime) evidence that the speed of action cancellation does not vary between SST and ARI tasks. Past research using behavioural measures (SSRT) to investigate motor selective stopping have reached similar conclusions (Hall et al, 2022; Wadsley et al, 2023), though other research which featured simple stopping (i.e., the go and stop responses involved only one effector) have observed faster SSRTs in ARI tasks compared to SSTs (Leunissen et al, 2017). These differences could be a result of the unreliable nature of conventional methods of SSRT calculation in ARI tasks (Matzke et al 2021) and selective stopping tasks (Bissett & Logan, 2014) which are not a simple race between a stop and go process, but also involve a third unimanual response (Gronau et al 2023).…”

“…Here, we seek to make direct intra-individual comparisons between CancelTime distributions in both ARI tasks and SSTs. Past research has found SSRT to be shorter in ARI tasks compared to SSTs (Leunissen et al, 2017), however, this finding is not universally observed (Hall et al, 2022; Wadsley et al, 2023), and the calculation of SSRT in these contexts has been rendered questionable (Matzke et al, 2021). Given the lack of previous research, we form no specific hypothesis regarding how CancelTime will differ between these tasks.…”

“…Here, we extend these findings, demonstrating this finding generalises across tasks (i.e., for both ARI tasks and SSTs). When only behavioural results are considered, stopping delays appear smaller in response to ignore trials than stop trials (Ko & Miller, 2013;Wadsley et al, 2023). Furthermore, failing to respond to the signal presented will result in an incorrect response in stop trials, whereas this trial will still be counted as correct in ignore trials, further reducing mean stopping delays to this trial type in the behavioural data.…”

“…The other signal (referred to here as an “ignore” signal), bears no behavioural imperative; the participant must simply ignore the unexpected signal and enact their response as though no additional signal has appeared. When examining behavioural results, the extent of the reaction time slowing that occurs in correct stop trials is greater than that which occurs in ignore trials in both SSTs (Ko & Miller, 2013) and ARI tasks (Wadsley et al, 2023). These findings suggest that the attentional component of inhibition does not entirely account for the stopping delays.…”

Examining motor evidence for the pause-then-cancel model of action-stopping: Insights from motor system physiology

“…Experiment 2 enabled measurement of SICI, which was calculated according to the following formula: Where TS refers to the suprathreshold (120% RMT) test stimulus and CS refers to the subthreshold (80% RMT) condition stimulus. Here, SICI is framed as % inhibition (e.g., Wadsley et al, 2023) with greater positive values indicating greater inhibition (i.e., more SICI).…”