Biology subjects

Salomoni, S. E.

Publications and source records attributed to Salomoni, S. E..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Stopping Speed to Auditory and Visual Stop Signals Depends on Go Signal Modality

Past research has found that the speed of the action cancellation process is influenced by the sensory modality/modalities of the environmental change that triggers it. However, the effect on selective stopping processes (where participants must cancel only one component of a multi-component movement) remains unknown, despite these complex movements often being required as we navigate our busy modern world. Thirty healthy adults (mean age = 31.1 years, SD = 10.5) completed five response-selective stop signal tasks featuring different combinations of "go signal" modality (the environmental change baring an imperative to initiate movement; auditory or visual) and "stop signal" modality (the environmental change indicating that action cancellation is required; auditory, visual, or audiovisual). Electromyographical (EMG) recordings of effector muscles allowed detailed comparison of the characteristics of voluntary action and cancellation between tasks. Behavioural and physiological measures of stopping speed demonstrated that the modality of the go signal influenced how quickly participants cancelled movement in response to the stop signal: stopping was faster in two cross-modal experimental conditions (auditory go - visual stop; visual go - auditory stop), than in two conditions using the same modality for both signals. A separate condition testing for multisensory facilitation revealed that stopping was fastest when the stop signal consisted of a combined audiovisual stimulus, compared to all other go-stop stimulus combinations. These findings provide novel evidence regarding the role of attentional networks in action cancellation and suggest modality specific cognitive resources influence the latency of the stopping process.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Selective Cancellation of Reactive and Anticipated Movement: Differences in Speed of Action Reprogramming, but not Stopping.

The ability to inhibit movements is an essential component of a healthy executive control system. Two distinct but commonly used tasks to assess motor inhibition are the stop signal task (SST) and the anticipated response inhibition (ARI) task. The SST and ARI tasks are similar in that they both require cancelation of a prepotent movement; however, the SST involves cancelation of a speeded reaction to a temporally unpredictable signal, while the ARI task involves cancelation of an anticipated response that the participant has prepared to enact at a wholly predictable time. 33 participants (mean age = 33.3 years, range = 18-55 years) completed variants of the SST and ARI task. In each task, the majority of trials required bimanual button presses, while on a subset of trials a stop signal indicated that one of the presses should be cancelled (i.e., motor selective inhibition). Additional variants of the tasks also included trials featuring signals which were to be ignored, allowing for insights into the attentional component of the inhibitory response. Electromyographic (EMG) recordings allowed detailed comparison of the characteristics of voluntary action and cancellation. The speed of the inhibitory process was not influenced by whether the enacted movement was reactive (SST) or anticipated (ARI task). However, the ongoing (non-cancelled) component of anticipated movements was more efficient than reactive movements, as a result of faster action reprogramming (i.e., faster ongoing actions following successful selective inhibition). Older age was associated with both slower inhibition and slower action reprogramming across all reactive and anticipated tasks.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Faster action reprogramming, but not stopping, with proactive cues: Combining EMG and computational modelling in response-selective stop signal tasks

The ability to stop simple ongoing actions has been extensively studied using the stop signal task, but less is known about inhibition in more complex scenarios. Here we used a task requiring bimanual responses to go stimuli, but selective inhibition of only one of those responses following a stop signal. We assessed how proactive cues affect the nature of both the responding and stopping processes, and the well-documented "stopping delay" in the continuing action following successful stopping. In this task, estimates of the speed of inhibition based on a simple-stopping model are inappropriate, and have produced inconsistent findings about the effects of proactive control on motor inhibition. We instead used a multi-modal approach, based on improved methods of detecting and interpreting partial electromyographical (EMG) responses and the recently proposed SIS (simultaneously inhibit and start) model of selective stopping behaviour. Our results provide clear and converging evidence that proactive cues reduce the stopping delay effect by slowing bimanual responses and speeding unimanual responses, with a negligible effect on the speed of the stopping process.

neuroscience↗