Two brakes are better than one: the neural bases of inhibitory control of motor memory traces

TY - JOUR

T1 - Two brakes are better than one: the neural bases of inhibitory control of motor memory traces

AU - Sauseng, Paul

AU - Gerloff, Christian

AU - Hummel, Friedhelm C

N1 - Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

PY - 2013/1/15

Y1 - 2013/1/15

N2 - Inhibitory control of actions is one important aspect in daily life to warrant adequate context related behavior. Alpha activity (oscillatory brain activity around 10Hz) has been suggested to play a major role for the implementation of inhibitory control. In the present study electrophysiological correlates of voluntary suppression of acquired, memorized motor actions have been compared to the suppression of novel motor actions. Multichannel EEG analyses of alpha power and alpha phase coherence were used. Healthy subjects were asked to inhibit the execution of either well-trained, memorized or untrained, novel sequential finger movements depending on the respective context. An increase of focal upper alpha activity at bilateral sensorimotor cortices was found during suppression of movements independent of whether these were memorized or novel. This represents a memory unspecific mechanism of motor cortical inhibition. In contrast, interregional phase synchronization between frontal and (left) central recording sites showed a differential effect with decoupling during suppression of memorized movements which was not the case with novel ones. Increase of fronto-central coupling at upper alpha frequency during retrieval of the memory trace and decrease during suppression of retrieval were obtained. This further supports the view of the functional relevance of upper alpha oscillations as a mechanism of context-dependent sustained inhibition of memory contents.

AB - Inhibitory control of actions is one important aspect in daily life to warrant adequate context related behavior. Alpha activity (oscillatory brain activity around 10Hz) has been suggested to play a major role for the implementation of inhibitory control. In the present study electrophysiological correlates of voluntary suppression of acquired, memorized motor actions have been compared to the suppression of novel motor actions. Multichannel EEG analyses of alpha power and alpha phase coherence were used. Healthy subjects were asked to inhibit the execution of either well-trained, memorized or untrained, novel sequential finger movements depending on the respective context. An increase of focal upper alpha activity at bilateral sensorimotor cortices was found during suppression of movements independent of whether these were memorized or novel. This represents a memory unspecific mechanism of motor cortical inhibition. In contrast, interregional phase synchronization between frontal and (left) central recording sites showed a differential effect with decoupling during suppression of memorized movements which was not the case with novel ones. Increase of fronto-central coupling at upper alpha frequency during retrieval of the memory trace and decrease during suppression of retrieval were obtained. This further supports the view of the functional relevance of upper alpha oscillations as a mechanism of context-dependent sustained inhibition of memory contents.

KW - Adult

KW - Brain

KW - Electroencephalography

KW - Female

KW - Humans

KW - Inhibition (Psychology)

KW - Male

KW - Memory

KW - Motor Activity

U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.09.048

DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.09.048

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 23032490

VL - 65

SP - 52

EP - 58

JO - NEUROIMAGE

JF - NEUROIMAGE

SN - 1053-8119

ER -