Deep-brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus improves overriding motor actions in Parkinson's disease.

Findings from previous research using the classic stop-signal task indicate that the subthalamic nucleus (STN) plays an important role in the ability to inhibit motor actions. Here we extend these findings using a stop-change task that requires voluntary action override to stop an ongoing motor response and change to an alternative response. Sixteen patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD) and 16 healthy control participants (HC) performed the stop-change task.

The arrow of time: Advancing insights into action control from the arrow version of the Eriksen flanker task.

Since its introduction by B. A. Eriksen and C.

Exposing an "Intangible" Cognitive Skill Among Collegiate Football Players: III. Enhanced Reaction Control to Motion.

Football is played in a dynamic, often unpredictable, visual environment in which players are challenged to process and respond with speed and flexibility to critical incoming stimulus events. To meet this challenge, we hypothesize that football players possess, in conjunction with their extraordinary physical skills, exceptionally proficient executive cognitive control systems that optimize response execution. It is particularly important for these systems to be proficient at coordinating directional reaction and counter-reaction decisions to the very rapid lateral movements routinely made by their opponents during a game.

Exposing an "Intangible" Cognitive Skill Among Collegiate Football Players: II. Enhanced Response Impulse Control.

American football is played in a dynamic environment that places considerable demands on a player's ability to make fast, precise reactions while controlling premature, impulsive reactions to spatial misinformation. We investigated the hypothesis that collegiate football players are more proficient than their non-athlete counterparts at controlling impulsive motor actions. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I football players ( = 280) and non-athlete controls ( = 32) completed a variant of the Simon conflict task, which quantifies choice reaction speed and the proficiency of controlling spatially driven response impulses.

Exposing an "Intangible" Cognitive Skill among Collegiate Football Players: Enhanced Interference Control.

American football is played in a chaotic visual environment filled with relevant and distracting information. We investigated the hypothesis that collegiate football players show exceptional skill at shielding their response execution from the interfering effects of distraction (). The performances of 280 football players from National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I football programs were compared to age-matched controls in a variant of the Eriksen flanker task (Eriksen and Eriksen, 1974).

Overriding actions in Parkinson's disease: Impaired stopping and changing of motor responses.

We administered a stop-change paradigm, an extended version of the stop task that requires (a) stopping an ongoing motor response and (b) changing to an alternative (change) response. Performance of a group of patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD) and taking dopaminergic medication was compared with that of matched healthy control (HC) participants. Behavioral results indicated that response latencies to the initial go signal did not distinguish between the 2 groups, but that stopping latencies were prolonged in PD patients.

Response-specific slowing in older age revealed through differential stimulus and response effects on P300 latency and reaction time.

Older age produces numerous changes in cognitive processes, including slowing in the rate of mental processing speed. There has been controversy over the past three decades about whether this slowing is generalized or process-specific. A growing literature indicates that it is process-specific and suggests it is most dramatic at the interface where a stimulus input is translated into a response output.

Patient Characterization Protocols for Psychophysiological Studies of Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-TBI Psychiatric Disorders.

Psychophysiological investigations of traumatic brain injury (TBI) are being conducted for several reasons, including the objective of learning more about the underlying physiological mechanisms of the pathological processes that can be initiated by a head injury. Additional goals include the development of objective physiologically based measures that can be used to monitor the response to treatment and to identify minimally symptomatic individuals who are at risk of delayed-onset neuropsychiatric disorders following injury. Research programs studying TBI search for relationships between psychophysiological measures, particularly ERP (event-related potential) component properties (e.

The vital role of the American Journal of Psychology in the early and continuing history of mental chronometry.

The American Journal of Psychology (AJP) was founded in 1887 by G. Stanley Hall during what Edwin G. Boring (1950) called the Period of Mental Chronometry and, consistent with the prevailing interests of the time, featured articles of relevance to scientists in this research domain.

Dopamine agonists and the suppression of impulsive motor actions in Parkinson disease.

The suppression of spontaneous motor impulses is an essential facet of cognitive control that is linked to frontal-BG circuitry. BG dysfunction caused by Parkinson disease (PD) disrupts the proficiency of action suppression, but how pharmacotherapy for PD impacts impulsive motor control is poorly understood. Dopamine agonists improve motor symptoms of PD but can also provoke impulsive-compulsive behaviors (ICB).

Subthalamic nucleus stimulation influences expression and suppression of impulsive behaviour in Parkinson's disease.

Past studies show beneficial as well as detrimental effects of subthalamic nucleus deep-brain stimulation on impulsive behaviour. We address this paradox by investigating individuals with Parkinson's disease treated with subthalamic nucleus stimulation (n = 17) and healthy controls without Parkinson's disease (n = 17) on performance in a Simon task. In this reaction time task, conflict between premature response impulses and goal-directed action selection is manipulated.

The effect of Parkinson's disease on the dynamics of on-line and proactive cognitive control during action selection.

Processing irrelevant visual information sometimes activates incorrect response impulses. The engagement of cognitive control mechanisms to suppress these impulses and make proactive adjustments to reduce the future impact of incorrect impulses may rely on the integrity of frontal-basal ganglia circuitry. Using a Simon task, we investigated the effects of basal ganglia dysfunction produced by Parkinson's disease (PD) on both on-line (within-trial) and proactive (between-trial) control efforts to reduce interference produced by the activation of an incorrect response.

Activation of conflicting responses in Parkinson's disease: evidence for degrading and facilitating effects on response time.

Response selection often occurs in a context of competition among conflicting responses. According to recent models, the basal ganglia may play an integral role in resolving this competition by focusing the selection and inhibition of responses. We hypothesized that basal ganglia dysfunction produced by Parkinson's disease (PD) disrupts selection among conflicting responses.

Errors are foreshadowed in brain potentials associated with action monitoring in cingulate cortex in humans.

Previous studies have reported electrophysiological brain activity that is modulated when subjects commit errors in speeded reaction time tasks. This activity is thought to index an action monitoring system in anterior cingulate cortex that signals the need for performance adjustments to minimize the risk of future errors. Consistent with this view, we report here that performance errors are foreshadowed in a modulation of this brain activity on the immediately preceding trial.

Older age, traumatic brain injury, and cognitive slowing: some convergent and divergent findings.

Reaction time (RT) meta-analyses of cognitive slowing indicate that all stages of processing slow equivalently and task independently among both older adults (J. Cerella & S. Hale, 1994) and adults who have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI; F.