RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Temporally-precise disruption of prefrontal cortex informed by the timing of beta bursts impairs human action-stopping
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 843557
DO 10.1101/843557
A1 Ricci Hannah
A1 Vignesh Muralidharan
A1 Kelsey K Sundby
A1 Adam R Aron
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/19/843557.abstract
AB Human action-stopping is widely considered to rely on a prefronto-basal ganglia-thalamocortical network, with right inferior frontal cortex (rIFC) posited to play a critical role in the early stage of implementation. Here we sought causal evidence for this idea in experiments involving healthy human participants (male/female). We first show that action-stopping is preceded by bursts of electroencephalographic activity in the beta band over prefrontal electrodes, putatively rIFC, and that the timing of these bursts correlates with the latency of stopping at a single-trial level: earlier bursts are associated with faster stopping. From this we reasoned that the integrity of rIFC at the time of beta bursts might be critical to the successful implementation of the stop process. We then used fMRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to disrupt rIFC at the approximate time of beta bursting. Stimulation prolonged stopping latencies and, moreover, the prolongation was most pronounced in individuals for whom the pulse appeared closer to the presumed time of beta bursting. These results help validate a prominent model of the neural architecture of action-stopping, whereby the process is initiated early by the rIFC (∼80-120 ms after a stop signal) and is then implemented via basal ganglia and primary motor cortex, before affecting the muscle at about 160 ms. The results also highlight the usefulness of prefrontal beta bursts to index an apparently important sub-process of stopping, the timing of which might help explain within- and between-individual variation in impulse control.