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1 Human Motor Control Laboratory, Dept of Sport & Exercise Science, University of Auckland-Tamaki Campus, Auckland, New Zealand
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: w.byblow{at}auckland.ac.nz.
In studies of volitional inhibition, successful task performance usually requires the prevention of all movement. In reality, movements are selectively prevented in the presence of global motor output. The aim of this study was to investigate the ability to prevent one movement while concurrently executing another, referred to as selective inhibition. In two experiments, participants released switches with either their index and middle fingers (Unimanual) or their left and right index fingers (Bimanual) to stop two moving indicators at a fixed target (Go trials). Stop trials occurred when either one or both indicators automatically stopped before reaching the target, signaling that prevention of the prepared movement was required. Stop All and selective Stop trials were randomly interspersed amongst more frequently occurring Go trials. We found that selective inhibition is harder to perform than non-selective inhibition, for both unimanual and bimanual task contexts. During selective inhibition trials, lift time of the responding digit was delayed in both experiments by up to 100 ms demonstrating the generality of the result. A non-selective neural inhibitory pathway may temporarily brake the required response, followed by selective excitation of the to-be-moved digits cortical representation. Following selective inhibition trials, there were persistent asynchronies between finger lift times of subsequent Go trials. The persistent effects reflect the behavioural consequences of non-specific neural inhibition combined with selective neural disinhibition.
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P. Boulinguez, M. Jaffard, L. Granjon, and A. Benraiss Warning Signals Induce Automatic EMG Activations and Proactive Volitional Inhibition: Evidence From Analysis of Error Distribution in Simple RT J Neurophysiol, March 1, 2008; 99(3): 1572 - 1578. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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