Stimulation of the Dorsal Premotor Cortex, But Not of the Supplementary Motor Area Proper, Impairs the Stop Function in a STOP Signal Task. (1st December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Parmigiani, Sara; Cattaneo, Luigi
• Is Part Of: Neuroscience. Volume 394(2018)
• Page Start: 14
• Page End: 22
• Publication Date: 2018-12-01
• Subjects: cIFG caudal inferior frontal gyrus -- MEP motor evoked potentials -- OOr orbicularis oris -- PMCd premotor cortex -- pre-SMA pre-supplementary motor area -- RMT resting motor threshold -- RTs reaction times -- SAI short-latency afferent inhibition -- SST Stop-signal task -- TA tibialis anterior -- TMS transcranial magnetic stimulation; premotor cortex -- supplementary motor area -- executive control -- inhibition -- motor control; Neurochemistry -- Periodicals; Neurophysiology -- Periodicals; Neurology -- Periodicals; Neurochimie -- Périodiques; Neurophysiologie -- Périodiques; Neurochemistry; Neurophysiology; Electronic journals; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 612.8
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2018.10.005
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0306-4522

Abstract

Highlights: Dorsal premotor cortex (PMCd) and SMA-proper are promising inhibitory nodes. PMCd plays a distinctive role in inhibition of visuomotor association. PMCd externally triggered inhibition occurs also for lower face movements. SMA-proper is not involved in stopping an action following an external cue. A premotor "mosaic" of task-dependent, inhibitory functions should be explored. Abstract: Being able to inhibit an impending movement in response to a contextual change is a distinctive feature of action control. Such inhibitory control relies on a complex cortical–subcortical network, including posterior prefrontal regions such as caudal inferior frontal gyrus and pre-supplementary motor area. According to hierarchical models of action control, both areas represent the intermediate level between prefronto-dependent and motor-related cortices. Going at a lower level, accumulating evidence speaks for an involvement of the primary motor cortex (M1) to dorsal premotor cortex (PMCd) or supplementary motor area proper (SMA-proper) pathways in producing inhibitory control. However, the clear-cut evidence for this conjecture is still missing. The aim of the present paper was to start filling this gap, investigating this lowest level of inhibitory control. We stimulated PMCd in a group of healthy volunteers with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or sham TMS during the response phase of a STOP-signal task performed with the lips. In a separate experimental group, we applied effective TMS/sham TMS to SMA-proper during the same task. We found that effective TMS over PMCd increased false-start errors in STOP trials ( p = 0.0005), but had no effect on GO trial performance ( p = 0.85). Effective TMS on SMA-proper produced no effect on STOP trials' performance ( p = 0.31) nor in the GO trial performance ( p = 0.56). Our data show that there is at least a portion of PMCd playing a distinctive role in the control of mouth-related M1 during instructed visuomotor inhibitory behavior. This region could therefore represent a low-level hierarchical node for externally cued action inhibition.