Marshall Amanda C, Ren Qiaoyue, Enk Lioba, Liu Junhui, Schütz-Bosbach Simone
Department of Psychology, General and Experimental Psychology Unit, LMU Munich, Leopoldstr. 13, D-80802, Munich, Germany.
Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstr. 1a, 04103, Leipzig, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2024 Dec 2;14(1):29847. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-80742-2.
Past work has shown that stimuli timed to the cardiac systole, the time at which heartbeat feedback is transmitted to the brain, can be more effectively selected from conflicting information. Here, we investigated how the temporal alignment of distracting information to different phases of the cardiac cycle impacts inhibitory performance on a stop-signal task. While participants received the go-cue and anticipated a potential stop-signal, we presented several moving dots on the screen. The dots' change of movement direction was timed to occur 290 ms posterior to the R-peak (for cardiac systole) or right at the R-peak (for cardiac diastole) of in-time ECG recordings. In a third control condition, no distracting dots were shown. Behavioural results found participants were significantly better at inhibiting their motor response in systole relative to diastole distractor trials. Electrophysiological evidence found reduced P2 amplitudes for viewing the distractors and enhanced N2 amplitudes to the subsequent stop-signal in systole relative to diastole distractor trials. This indicated that systole bound distractors were suppressed more effectively than diastole bound ones which led to enhanced motor inhibition. Our results indicate that the brain shows greater visual selection efficiency for distracting information co-occurring with cardiac systole which has implications for enhanced motor processing at later stages of the trial sequence.
过去的研究表明，与心脏收缩期（心跳反馈传输到大脑的时刻）同步的刺激，能更有效地从相互冲突的信息中被筛选出来。在此，我们研究了干扰信息与心动周期不同阶段的时间对齐方式，如何影响停止信号任务中的抑制表现。当参与者收到开始信号并预期可能出现停止信号时，我们在屏幕上呈现了几个移动的点。这些点的运动方向变化被设定在同步心电图记录的R波峰值后290毫秒（对应心脏收缩期）或正好在R波峰值处（对应心脏舒张期）发生。在第三种对照条件下，未显示干扰点。行为学结果发现，与舒张期干扰试验相比，参与者在收缩期干扰试验中抑制运动反应的能力明显更强。电生理学证据表明，与舒张期干扰试验相比，在收缩期观看干扰物时P2波幅降低，而对随后的停止信号N2波幅增强。这表明与收缩期相关的干扰物比与舒张期相关的干扰物受到更有效的抑制，从而导致运动抑制增强。我们的结果表明，大脑对与心脏收缩期同时出现的干扰信息表现出更高的视觉选择效率，这对试验序列后期的运动处理增强具有重要意义。
