1. Neuroscience

Temporal cascade of frontal, motor and muscle processes underlying human action-stopping

  1. Sumitash Jana  Is a corresponding author
  2. Ricci Hannah  Is a corresponding author
  3. Vignesh Muralidharan
  4. Adam R Aron
  1. University of California, San Diego, United States
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.50371
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  1. Sumitash Jana
  2. Ricci Hannah
  3. Vignesh Muralidharan
  4. Adam R Aron
(2020)
Temporal cascade of frontal, motor and muscle processes underlying human action-stopping
eLife 9:e50371.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.50371
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Abstract

Action-stopping is a canonical executive function thought to involve top-down control over the motor system. Here we aimed to validate this stopping system using high temporal resolution methods in humans. We show that, following the requirement to stop, there was an increase of right frontal beta (~13 to 30 Hz) at ~120 ms, likely a proxy of right inferior frontal gyrus; then, at 140 ms, there was a broad skeletomotor suppression, likely reflecting the impact of the subthalamic nucleus on basal ganglia output; then, at ~160 ms, suppression was detected in the muscle, and, finally, the behavioral time of stopping was ~220 ms. This temporal cascade supports a physiological model of action-stopping, and partitions it into subprocesses that are isolable to different nodes and are more precise than the behavioral latency of stopping. Variation in these subprocesses, including at the single-trial level, could better explain individual differences in impulse control.

Data availability

A core element of this paper is a novel method of calculating single-trial stopping speed from EMG. Accordingly, we provide the EMG and behavioral data from 10 participants in study 1, along with analysis scripts, and a brief description of how to execute the scripts (https://osf.io/b2ng5/).

The following data sets were generated

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Author details

  1. Sumitash Jana

    Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, United States
    For correspondence
    s2jana@ucsd.edu
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3742-3958

  2. Ricci Hannah

    Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, United States
    For correspondence
    rhannah@ucsd.edu
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  3. Vignesh Muralidharan

    Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  4. Adam R Aron

    Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, United States
    Competing interests
    Adam R Aron, Reviewing editor, eLife.

Funding

National Institutes of Health (NS 106822,DA 026452)

  • Sumitash Jana
  • Ricci Hannah
  • Vignesh Muralidharan
  • Adam R Aron

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: All human volunteers provided written informed consent prior to their participation. The participants were compensated at $20/hour. The University of California San Diego Institutional Review Board approved all the studies (protocol #171285).

Copyright

© 2020, Jana et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Sumitash Jana
  2. Ricci Hannah
  3. Vignesh Muralidharan
  4. Adam R Aron
(2020)
Temporal cascade of frontal, motor and muscle processes underlying human action-stopping
eLife 9:e50371.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.50371

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.50371

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