Effects of stop-signal probability in the stop-signal paradigm: The N2/P3 complex further validated

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of frequency of occurrence of stop signals in the stop-signal paradigm. Presenting stop signals less frequently resulted in faster reaction times to the go stimulus and a lower probability of inhibition. Also, go stimuli elicited larger and somewhat earlier P3 responses when stop signals occurred less frequently. Since the amplitude effect was more pronounced on trials when go signals were followed by fast than slow reactions, it probably reflected a stronger set to produce fast responses. N2 and P3 components to stop signals were observed to be larger and of longer latency when stop signals occurred less frequently. The amplitude enhancement of these N2 and P3 components were more pronounced for unsuccessful than for successful stop-signal trials. Moreover, the successfully inhibited stop trials elicited a frontocentral P3 whereas unsuccessfully inhibited stop trials elicited a more posterior P3 that resembled the classical P3b. P3 amplitude in the unsuccessfully inhibited condition also differed between waveforms synchronized with the stop signal and waveforms synchronized with response onset whereas N2 amplitude did not. Taken together these findings suggest that N2 reflected a greater significance of failed inhibitions after low probability stop signals while P3 reflected continued processing of the erroneous response after response execution.

[1]  G. Logan.  On the ability to inhibit thought and action , 1984 .

[2]  M. Verbaten,et al.  Event-Related Brain Research , 1991 .

[3]  Stuart J Johnstone,et al.  Inhibitory motor control in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: event-related potentials in the stop-signal paradigm , 2003, Biological Psychiatry.

[4]  G. Goldberg.  Supplementary motor area structure and function: Review and hypotheses , 1985, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[5]  C. Eriksen,et al.  Use of a delayed signal to stop a visual reaction-time response. , 1966 .

[6]  M Spitzer,et al.  The time course of brain activations during response inhibition: evidence from event‐related potentials in a go/no go task , 1998, Neuroreport.

[7]  R. Passingham.  The prefrontal cortex: Anatomy physiology and neurophysiology of the frontal lobe J. M. Fuster. Raven Press, New York (1980), 222 pp., $29.92 , 1981, Neuroscience.

[8]  C. Braun,et al.  Event-Related Brain Potentials Following Incorrect Feedback in a Time-Estimation Task: Evidence for a Generic Neural System for Error Detection , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[9]  J. Hohnsbein,et al.  Event-related potential correlates of errors in reaction tasks. , 1995, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology. Supplement.

[10]  J. Sergeant,et al.  Inhibitory deficits in reading disability depend on subtype: guessers but not spellers. , 2000, Child neuropsychology : a journal on normal and abnormal development in childhood and adolescence.

[11]  J. Ford,et al.  ERPs to response production and inhibition. , 1985, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[12]  G. Logan,et al.  In search of the point of no return: the control of response processes. , 1990, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[13]  J. C. Woestenburg,et al.  The removal of the eye-movement artifact from the EEG by regression analysis in the frequency domain , 1983, Biological Psychology.

[14]  David L. Strayer,et al.  Aging and inhibition: beyond a unitary view of inhibitory processing in attention. , 1994, Psychology and aging.

[15]  A Kok,et al.  Varieties of inhibition: manifestations in cognition, event-related potentials and aging. , 1999, Acta psychologica.

[16]  E. Donchin,et al.  Cognitive Psychophysiology and Human Information Processing , 1986 .

[17]  A Pfefferbaum,et al.  ERPs to stimuli requiring response production and inhibition: effects of age, probability and visual noise. , 1988, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[18]  E. Donchin,et al.  Probability effects on stimulus evaluation and response processes. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[19]  F Rösler,et al.  Perception or action: some comments on preparatory negative potentials. , 1991, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology. Supplement.

[20]  Jan K Buitelaar,et al.  Inhibition in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a psychophysiological study of the stop task , 2002, Biological Psychiatry.

[21]  Jeff Miller,et al.  Locus of the stimulus probability effect , 1973 .

[22]  Martin Eimer,et al.  Effects of attention and stimulus probability on ERPs in a Go/Nogo task , 1993, Biological Psychology.

[23]  J. Hohnsbein,et al.  ERP components on reaction errors and their functional significance: a tutorial , 2000, Biological Psychology.

[24]  Mario Liotti,et al.  Inhibitory control in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: event-related potentials identify the processing component and timing of an impaired right-frontal response-inhibition mechanism , 2000, Biological Psychiatry.

[25]  M. Botvinick,et al.  Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. , 2001, Psychological review.

[26]  M. Botvinick,et al.  Anterior cingulate cortex, error detection, and the online monitoring of performance. , 1998, Science.

[27]  D. Meyer,et al.  A Neural System for Error Detection and Compensation , 1993 .

[28]  E. Jodo,et al.  Relation of a negative ERP component to response inhibition in a Go/No-go task. , 1992, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[29]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  A Developmental Functional MRI Study of Prefrontal Activation during Performance of a Go-No-Go Task , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[30]  K. R. Ridderinkhof,et al.  A study of adaptive behavior: effects of age and irrelevant information on the ability to inhibit one's actions , 1999 .

[31]  A. A. Wijers,et al.  Inhibition, response mode, and stimulus probability: a comparative event-related potential study , 2002, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[32]  N Birbaumer,et al.  Mapping P300 waves onto inhibition: Go/No-Go discrimination. , 1994, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[33]  Gordon D. Logan,et al.  Dependence and independence in responding to double stimulation: A comparison of stop, change, and dual-task paradigms. , 1986 .

[34]  Michael Falkenstein,et al.  Errors, Conflicts, and the Brain , 2004 .

[35]  G. Logan,et al.  On the ability to inhibit simple and choice reaction time responses: a model and a method. , 1984, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[36]  B. Kopp,et al.  N2, P3 and the lateralized readiness potential in a nogo task involving selective response priming. , 1996, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[37]  T. Braver,et al.  Anterior cingulate cortex and response conflict: effects of frequency, inhibition and errors. , 2001, Cerebral cortex.

[38]  K. R. Ridderinkhof,et al.  Electrophysiological correlates of anterior cingulate function in a go/no-go task: Effects of response conflict and trial type frequency , 2003, Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience.

[39]  J. Hohnsbein,et al.  Effects of crossmodal divided attention on late ERP components. II. Error processing in choice reaction tasks. , 1991, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[40]  G. Glover,et al.  Error‐related brain activation during a Go/NoGo response inhibition task , 2001, Human brain mapping.

[41]  E. Donchin,et al.  On quantifying surprise: the variation of event-related potentials with subjective probability. , 1977, Psychophysiology.

[42]  E. Stein,et al.  Right hemispheric dominance of inhibitory control: an event-related functional MRI study. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[43]  Saul Sternberg,et al.  The discovery of processing stages: Extensions of Donders' method , 1969 .

[44]  K Richard Ridderinkhof,et al.  ERP components associated with successful and unsuccessful stopping in a stop-signal task. , 2004, Psychophysiology.

[45]  Gordon D Logan,et al.  Horse-race model simulations of the stop-signal procedure. , 2003, Acta psychologica.

[46]  T. Robbins,et al.  Stop-signal inhibition disrupted by damage to right inferior frontal gyrus in humans , 2003, Nature Neuroscience.

[47]  J. Kalaska,et al.  Deciding not to GO: neuronal correlates of response selection in a GO/NOGO task in primate premotor and parietal cortex. , 1995, Cerebral cortex.

[48]  T. Carr,et al.  Inhibitory Processes in Attention, Memory and Language , 1994 .

[49]  P. Goldman-Rakic,et al.  Infrequent events transiently activate human prefrontal and parietal cortex as measured by functional MRI. , 1997, Journal of neurophysiology.

[50]  G. Karmos,et al.  Perspectives of Event-Related Potentials Research , 1995 .

[51]  Katya Rubia,et al.  Right inferior prefrontal cortex mediates response inhibition while mesial prefrontal cortex is responsible for error detection , 2003, NeuroImage.

[52]  A. Kok.  Effects of degradation of visual stimuli on components of the event-related potential (ERP) in go/nogo reaction tasks , 1986, Biological Psychology.

[53]  A. Sanders.  20 Stage Analysis of Reaction Processes , 1980 .

[54]  Y. Miyashita,et al.  Common inhibitory mechanism in human inferior prefrontal cortex revealed by event-related functional MRI. , 1999, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[55]  G. Stelmach,et al.  Tutorials in Motor Behavior , 1980 .

[56]  K. R. Ridderinkhof,et al.  Error-related brain potentials are differentially related to awareness of response errors: evidence from an antisaccade task. , 2001, Psychophysiology.

[57]  J Miller,et al.  The usefulness of partial information: effects of go probability in the choice/Nogo task. , 1999, Psychophysiology.

[58]  E. Donchin,et al.  Psychophysiology : systems, processes, and applications , 1987 .

[59]  E. Bullmore,et al.  Mapping Motor Inhibition: Conjunctive Brain Activations across Different Versions of Go/No-Go and Stop Tasks , 2001, NeuroImage.

[60]  J. Kenemans,et al.  Split-Second Sequential Selective Activation in Human Secondary Visual Cortex , 2002, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[61]  E. Donchin,et al.  Event-related brain potentials and error-related processing: an analysis of incorrect responses to go and no-go stimuli. , 1996, Psychophysiology.