Frontal Cortex Mediates Unconsciously Triggered Inhibitory Control

There is abundant literature demonstrating that processing emotional stimuli modulates inhibitory control processes. However, the reverse effects, namely, how cognitive inhibition influences the processing of emotional stimuli, have been considerably neglected. This ERP study tries to fill this gap by studying the bidirectional interactions between emotional language and inhibitory processes. To this end, participants read emotional sentences, embedded in a cue-based Go-NoGo task. In Experiment 1, the critical emotional adjective preceded the Go-NoGo visual cue. The ERPs showed a significant reduction in the inhibition-related N2 component in NoGo trials when they were preceded by negative adjectives, compared to positive or neutral adjectives, indicating a priming-like effect on inhibitory control. Consistently, the estimated source of this interaction was the dorsomedial PFC, a region associated with inhibitory and control processes. In Experiment 2, the Go-NoGo cue preceded the emotional adjective, and the ERPs showed a sustained, broadly distributed LPP-like positivity for NoGo negative trials, relative to all the other conditions. In this case, the presetting of an inhibition state modulated the processing of negatively charged words. Together, the two experiments suggest a mutual facilitation between inhibitory control and negative valence, supporting thereby recent integrative theories of cognition-emotion interactions.

The influence of punishment anticipation on inhibitory control processing in individuals with test anxiety.

The frontal lobe hypothesis of ageing proposes that cognitive functions associated with the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are more susceptible to age-related changes than those supported by other brain regions (e.g., Dempster, 1992; West, 1996). Age-related declines previously demonstrated in working memory (e.g., Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2005), inhibitory control (Dempster, 1992), executive attention (e.g., West, 2004) and fluid intelligence (Horn & Cattell, 1967), have been linked to changes in PFC functioning. Relational processing also depends on the integrity of the PFC (e.g., Christoff et al., 2001), but research on age-related declines in relational processing is limited (Andrews & Todd, 2008; Viskontas, Holyoak, & Knowlton, 2005; Viskontas, Morrison, Holyoak, Hummel, & Knowlton, 2004). Unlike previous research which tended to focus on a single construct, the current research investigated age-related changes in executive attention, inhibitory control, working memory and relational processing. Distinctions within three constructs were also of interest. Three aspects of inhibitory control (response inhibition, task-set switching and inhibition in memory retrieval) were examined. Relational processing was examined in four tasks, three of which involved items at two or more levels of complexity. Working memory was examined using simple span and complex span tasks. The test battery of 16 tasks assessed these constructs as well as speed of processing, crystallized and fluid intelligence, and frontal functioning (Tower of London). It was administered to a sample of 125 normally ageing adults who ranged in age from 18 years to 92 years with all age decades represented.

Inhibitory control, the ability to suppress prepotent responses and resist irrelevant stimuli, is thought to play a critical role in the manifestation and maintenance of obesity in adolescents. Adolescence is a unique developmental stage characterized by significant maturational changes in cortical structures (i.e., prefrontal cortex: PFC) that relate to inhibitory control processes. The current study investigated the behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of inhibitory control in adolescents withobesity. We compared 18 normal-weight and 22 adolescents with obesity on performance and electroencephalography (EEG)-based measures during a Go/NoGo task. We investigated N2 and P3 event-related potential (ERP) components. Adolescents with obesity showed lower accuracy compared to their normal-weight peers in NoGo trials where greater amounts of inhibitory control effort were required (p = 0.03). Adolescents with obesity had larger NoGo N2 amplitude relative to the Go N2 amplitude (p = 0.03), whereas this difference was not observed in the healthy weight sample. Furthermore, a lower self-efficacy of individual's ability to control eating behaviors in challenging situations (as measured by the Weight Efficacy Lifestyle-Short Form) directly correlated with larger NoGo N2 amplitudes for both obese (p = 0.03) and normal weight groups (p = 0.01). These findings suggested that obesity in adolescence is associated with a decreased ability to modulate cognitive conflict during the inhibitory control processing. The individual differences in conflict monitoring during situations where greater amounts of inhibitory control effort were required might provide an explanation for overeating behaviors in obese adolescents.

It has recently been proposed that comprehension of negation reuses the inhibitory control mechanisms. However, this Reusing Inhibition for Negation (RIN) hypothesis has mostly been confirmed with imperative sentences. The current study examined whether comprehension of negated existential sentences, which are purely declarative, also shares neural resources with inhibitory control processes. Participants read affirmative or negative existential sentences while performing an embedded Go/NoGo task, followed by a recognition probe to test the impact of negation on words activation. Relative to affirmative sentences, negation increased the P3 amplitude for NoGo trials, with estimated sources in the inhibition-related medial and dorsolateral areas in the prefrontal and parietal cortices. These results indicate that existential negation also shares neural mechanisms with inhibitory control, extending the RIN hypothesis. Furthermore, recognising negated words took longer and decreased the readiness potential of the responses compared to affirmed words, suggesting reduced accessibility of negated words in working memory.

Despite markedly different clinical presentations, few studies have reported differences in neuropsychological functioning between mania and depression. The disinhibited behaviour characteristic of mania and evidence that subgenual prefrontal cortex is differentially activated in mania and depression both suggest that dissociable deficits will emerge on tasks that require inhibitory control and are subserved by ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Manic patients and controls undertook computerized neuropsychological tests of memory and planning ability. In addition, manic and depressed patients were directly compared with controls on a novel affective shifting task that requires inhibitory control over different components of cognitive and emotional processing. Manic patients were impaired on tests of memory and planning. Importantly, affective shifting performance of manic patients differed from that of depressed patients. Manic patients were impaired in their ability to inhibit behavioural responses and focus attention, but depressed patients were impaired in their ability to shift the focus of attention. Depressed patients exhibited an affective bias for negative stimuli, and we believe this to be the first demonstration of an affective bias for positive stimuli in manic patients. Observed impairments on tests of memory and planning suggest a global pathology for mania consistent with previous profiles for this disorder and similar to established profiles for depression. The results on the affective shifting task demonstrate the presence of mood-congruent bias and dissociable components of inhibitory control in mania and depression. Against a background of memory and planning impairments in the two groups, these findings are consistent with a role for the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in mediating mood-cognition relationships.

P.4.014 Developmental differences in higherorder resting-state networks in autism spectrum disorder

Measures of frontal functioning and the emergence of inhibitory control processes at 10 months of age

Two psychological mechanisms seem to be associated with the obsessive-compulsive cycle: (1) an emotional mechanism characterized by intense emotional arousal associated with intrusive thoughts of impending danger; (2) a cognitive mechanism exemplified by difficulties with inhibitory control. Several studies found more extensive cognitive deficits in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) beyond problems of inhibitory control and emotional regulation, namely: visual-spatial processing and memory. Thus, there is now extensive research showing that alterations of these psychological mechanisms in OCD (i.e., inhibitory control, emotional regulation, working memory, and visual spatial processing) are associated with morphological gray matter alterations in widespread brain regions. More recently, researchers have started looking at white matter abnormalities in OCD. In this article we review the research looking at white matter morphometric and structural connectivity alterations in OCD. Altogether, while some contradictory findings are still present, there is now evidence for widespread white matter morphometric and connectivity abnormalities affecting major white matter tracts (superior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, cingulum bundle, semioval center, internal capsule, different regions of the corpus callosum, thalamic radiation, uncinate fasciculus and optic radiation) as well as white matter in regions adjacent to gray matter structures (superior frontal gyrus, dorsolateral prefrontal medial frontal cortex; inferior frontal gyrus, caudate, insulate cortex, parietal cortex, supramarginal and lingual gyri, and thalamus). These white matter alterations may help explaining the diversity of OCD psychological impairments in inhibitory control, emotional regulation, memory and visual spatial processing.

The cognitive signature of unconscious processes is hotly debated recently. Generally, consciousness is thought to mediate flexible, adaptive and goal-directed behavior, but in the last decade unconscious processing has rapidly gained ground on traditional conscious territory. In this study we demonstrate that the scope and impact of unconscious information on behavior and brain activity can be modulated dynamically on a trial-by-trial basis. Participants performed a Go/No-Go experiment in which an unconscious (masked) stimulus preceding a conscious target could be associated with either a Go or No-Go response. Importantly, the mapping of stimuli onto these actions varied on a trial-by-trial basis, preventing the formation of stable associations and hence the possibility that unconscious stimuli automatically activate these control actions. By eliminating stimulus-response associations established through practice we demonstrate that unconscious information can be processed in a flexible and adaptive manner. In this experiment we show that the same unconscious stimulus can have a substantially different effect on behavior and (prefrontal) brain activity depending on the rapidly changing task context in which it is presented. This work suggests that unconscious information processing shares many sophisticated characteristics (including flexibility and context-specificity) with its conscious counterpart.

Serotonin transporter polymorphisms predict response inhibition in healthy volunteers

Time course of free-choice priming effects explained by a simple accumulator model

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by deficits in inhibitory control and attentional processes. The emotional nature of stimuli can significantly influence these cognitive processes, yet traditional paradigms assessing inhibitory responses, such as the Stop-Signal Task, typically neglect emotional stimuli. This limitation reduces their capacity to capture the cognitive impairments associated with OCD fully. To address this gap, we introduce the Modified Emotional Stop-Signal Task (MESST), a novel paradigm designed to concurrently evaluate inhibitory control and attentional biases through eye-tracking technology. MESST integrates emotionally evocative stimuli into a standard stop-signal framework, allowing simultaneous measurement of Stop-Signal Reaction Time (SSRT) and attentional metrics such as latency to first fixation and total dwell time. Additionally, participants complete validated psychological scales—the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11), and Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory–Revised (OCI-R)—providing detailed characterization of impulsivity and anxiety traits. Suitable for normative and clinical populations, MESST facilitates the investigation of interactions between emotional processing, cognitive control, and attentional biases, thereby advancing our understanding of the cognitive-emotional mechanisms underlying OCD and related disorders.•Integrates emotional stimuli into a standard inhibitory control paradigm.•Measures attentional processes concurrently via high-frequency eye-tracking.•Applicable to both clinical and non-clinical populations.

According to the conflict monitoring hypothesis, conflict monitoring and inhibitory control in cognitive control mainly cause activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and control-related prefrontal cortex (PFC) in many cognitive tasks. However, the role of brain regions in the default mode network (DMN) in cognitive control during category induction tasks is unclear. To test the role of the ACC, PFC, and subregions of the DMN elicited by cognitive control during category induction, a modified category induction task was performed using simultaneous fMRI scanning. The results showed that the left middle frontal gyrus (BA9) and bilateral dorsal ACC/medial frontal gyrus (BA8/32) were sensitive to whether conflict information (with/without) appears, but not to the level of conflict. In addition, the bilateral ventral ACC (BA32), especially the right vACC, a part of the DMN, showed significant deactivation with an increase in cognitive effort depending on working memory. These findings not only offer further evidence for the important role of the dorsolateral PFC and dorsal ACC in cognitive control during categorization but also support the functional distinction of the dorsal/ventral ACC in the category induction task.

According to the balance model of self-regulation, dysfunction of the inhibitory control and reward processing might be a behavioral marker for addiction and problematic behaviors. Although several studies have separately examined the inhibitory control or reward processing of individuals exhibiting problematic Internet use (PIU), no study has explored these two functions simultaneously to examine the potential imbalance of these functions. This study aimed to investigate whether the self-regulatory failure of PIU individuals results from deficits in both inhibitory control [indexed with the stop signal reaction time (SSRT) in a stop signal task] and risk taking with losses (measured as the acceptance rates of risky gables or the ratio of win/loss in a mixed gambles task). The results revealed that PIU individuals, compared with controls, showed decreased SSRT and increased error rates as well as reduced risk taking with losses. Correlational analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between the SSRT and risk taking with losses. These findings suggest that both the inhibitory control and reward functions are impaired in PIU individuals and reveal an association between these two systems. These results strengthen the balance model of self-regulation theory’s argument that deficits in inhibitory control and risk taking with losses may assist in identifying risk markers for early diagnosis, progression, and prediction of PIU.