Enhanced response inhibition in experienced fencers

Abstract

The inhibition of a prepotent response is an essential executive function which enables us to suppress inappropriate actions in a given context. Individuals with fencing expertise exhibit behavioral advantages on tasks with high demands on response inhibition. This study examines the electrophysiological basis for the superior response inhibition in experienced fencers. In the Go/Nogo task where frequent stimuli required a motor response while reaction had to be withheld to rare stimuli, the fencers, compared with the non-fencers, exhibited behavioral as well as electrophysiological advantages when suppressing prepotent responses. The superior response inhibition in the fencers was characterized by enhanced Nogo-N2 and reduced Nogo-P3. Single-trial analysis revealed that the amplitude difference of the Nogo-N2 between two groups was caused by lower single-trial latency variability in the fencers (may be due to low attentional fluctuation and/or stable neural processing speed) while the amplitude difference of the Nogo-P3 resulted from truly weaker neural activity in the fencers (may be because few cognitive sources are needed and few control efforts are made). The two inhibition-related components are distinct neurophysiological indexes that, on the one hand, provide effective guidance to titrate the level of executive function in fencers, and on the other hand, facilitate to monitor fencers’ improvement in the training process.

ReSync: Correcting the trial-to-trial asynchrony of event-related brain potentials to improve neural response representation

“…timing, behavioral effect, functional role, and anatomical feature (Bodmer, Muckschel, Roessner, & Beste, 2018;Miller, Ulrich, & Schwarz, 2009;Yang et al, 2017;D. D. Zhang, Ding, Wang, Qi, & Luo, 2015 (Fig 9d).…”

Trait Anxiety Attenuates Response Inhibition: Evidence From an ERP Study Using the Go/NoGo Task

“…As mentioned in the introduction, the NoGo-N2 reflects the inhibitory process of a motor plan prior to the motor execution stage (Eimer, 1993;Falkenstein et al, 1999;Herrmann et al, 2003;Karch et al, 2007;Kim et al, 2007;Huster et al, 2013), and this inhibitory process is usually located at the premotor level rather than at the motor level (Falkenstein et al, 1999). The N2 enhancement to the NoGo stimulus has been suggested to reflect the suppression of incorrect response prior to the motor action (Falkenstein et al, 1999;Zhang et al, 2015), and a shorter-latency NoGo-N2 has been observed in successful withholding to NoGo stimuli compared with unsuccessful attempts to inhibit (Roche et al, 2005). In addition, neuroimaging studies have revealed that the neural sources of NoGo-N2 are located in the ACC and inferior/orbitofrontal prefrontal cortex (Kiefer et al, 1998;Bokura et al, 2001;Bekker et al, 2005).…”

“…In addition, the prolonged NoGo-P3 latency might reflect the extent of evaluation processing (Roche et al, 2005). Taken together, the superior response inhibition in subjects was characterized by larger and shorter NoGo-N2 as well as smaller and shorter NoGo-P3 (Zhang et al, 2015).…”

ReSync: Correcting the trial-to-trial asynchrony of event-related brain potentials to improve neural response representation

“…timing, behavioral effect, functional role, and anatomical feature (Bodmer, Muckschel, Roessner, & Beste, 2018;Miller, Ulrich, & Schwarz, 2009;Yang et al, 2017;D. D. Zhang, Ding, Wang, Qi, & Luo, 2015).…”