Department of Psychology, University of York, YO10 5DD, UK.
Neuroimage. 2018 Nov 1;181:108-119. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.06.074. Epub 2018 Jun 30.
We frequently guide our decisions about when and how to act based on the meanings of perceptual inputs: we might avoid treading on a flower, but not on a leaf. However, most research on response inhibition has used simple perceptual stimuli devoid of meaning. In two Go/No-Go experiments, we examined whether the neural mechanisms supporting response inhibition are influenced by the relevance of meaning to the decision, and by presentation modality (whether concepts were presented as words or images). In an on-line fMRI experiment, we found common regions for response inhibition across perceptual and conceptual decisions. These included the bilateral intraparietal sulcus and the right inferior frontal sulcus, whose neural responses have been linked to diverse cognitive demands in previous studies. In addition, we identified a cluster in ventral lateral occipital cortex that was sensitive to the modality of input, with a stronger response to No-Go than Go trials for meaningful images, compared to words with the same semantic content. In a second experiment, using resting-state fMRI, we explored how individual variation in the intrinsic connectivity of these activated regions related to variation in behavioural performance. Participants who showed stronger connectivity between common inhibition regions and limbic areas in medial temporal and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex were better at inhibition when this was driven by the meaning of the items. In addition, regions with a specific role in picture inhibition were more connected to a cluster in the thalamus/caudate for participants who were better at performing the picture task outside of the scanner. Together these studies indicate that the capacity to appropriately withhold action depends on interactions between common control regions, which are important across multiple types of input and decision, and other brain regions linked to specific inputs (i.e., visual features) or representations (e.g., memory).
我们可能会避免踩到花朵，但不会踩到叶子。然而，大多数关于反应抑制的研究都使用了没有意义的简单感知刺激。在两项 Go/No-Go 实验中，我们研究了支持反应抑制的神经机制是否受到意义与决策的相关性以及呈现方式（概念是作为单词还是图像呈现）的影响。在一项在线 fMRI 实验中，我们发现了跨感知和概念决策的共同反应抑制区域。这些区域包括双侧顶内沟和右侧额下回，在之前的研究中，这些区域的神经反应与各种认知需求有关。此外，我们在腹外侧枕叶皮层中发现了一个对输入模态敏感的簇，与具有相同语义内容的单词相比，对有意义的图像的 No-Go 试验的反应更强。在第二项实验中，我们使用静息态 fMRI 探索了这些激活区域的固有连接个体差异如何与行为表现的变化相关。当项目的意义驱动抑制时，那些在共同抑制区域和内侧颞叶和前扣带回亚区的边缘区域之间表现出更强连接的参与者在抑制方面表现更好。此外，对于在扫描仪外更好地执行图片任务的参与者，在图片抑制中具有特定作用的区域与丘脑/尾状核中的一个簇的连接更加紧密。这些研究表明，适当抑制行动的能力取决于共同控制区域之间的相互作用，这些区域对于多种类型的输入和决策都很重要，并且与特定输入（即视觉特征）或表示（例如，记忆）相关的其他大脑区域。
