Fronto-basal-ganglia circuits for selective stopping and braking

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal addresses the neural architecture underlying how people are able to use their goals to control inappropriate urges. This has large significance for a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by impulsivity and perseveration. In the United States, the financial and societal cost of these disorders is staggering. Better understanding how people control themselves has come from the stop- signal paradigm, in which subjects must occasionally stop an initiated response. The neural architecture underlying the form of stopping in the standard stop-signal paradigm is already quite well understood. It is highly translatable across species and it has proven a very useful biomarker for cognitive control impairments in many neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the form of stopping measured in the standard stop-signal paradigm has some limitations as a model for real world control because it appears to have global effects on the motor system. Yet a person's ability to control an inappropriate urge requires selectivity of the control (i.e. to stop one tendency but not others). We have recently proposed a new behavioral method to study selective stopping. The first aim of this proposal is to study the neural mechanisms of selective stopping. We will use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) in healthy volunteers to dissociate the fronto-basal-ganglia brain circuits for global stopping from those for selective stopping. We will use Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to examine the difference between global and selective stopping by identifying effects on motor representations in the primary motor cortex. We will use Electrocorticography (ECoG) in patients being evaluated for epilepsy to address how the functions of goal monitoring and response inhibition interact in the prefrontal cortex to allow a subject to stop selectively. ECoG provides unique spatiotemporal resolution to address this question in humans. Besides "stopping", real-world control also requires a form of control that prevents responding without canceling it completely -something more akin to 'braking'. The second aim of this proposal is to study the neural mechanisms of braking and their relation with stopping. We will use all three methods of fMRI, TMS and ECoG. We anticipate that braking recruits the same brain systems as stopping, but without canceling motor output completely. Together, these studies will provide a novel neural-systems model for how selective stopping is possible and for how it relates to braking. This will enhance and expand understanding of cognitive control mechanisms, and is relevant for many diverse conditions including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Tourette's syndrome, and substance abuse problems - all characterized by a loss of goal-driven control over particular response tendencies. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This proposal addresses the neural architecture underlying how people are able to use their goals to control inappropriate urges. This will contribute to a better understanding of mechanisms of cognitive control. This is important for disorders such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Tourette's syndrome and substance abuse problems, which are all characterized by a loss of goal-driven control over particular response tendencies.