Cortical and subcortical functional specificity associated with response inhibition.

The existence of specific neuronal systems dedicated for response inhibition, as opposed tomore general action updating, is controversial. This pre-registered study employed a taskinvolving both inhibitory and non-inhibitory action updating in combination with functionalmagnetic resonance imaging to test the specificity of responses under different updatingconditions, including the cessation of actions. Cortical regions of activity were found to becommon to multiple forms of action updating. However, functional specificity duringresponse inhibition was observed in the anterior right Inferior Frontal Gyrus. In addition, wedeveloped an exploratory contrast method which suggested this specificity continueddownstream to subcortical loci, with right hemisphere activity largely supporting responseinhibition, and left hemisphere activity associated with right hand response execution. Thepattern of activations supports putative models of subcortical pathways and extends themthrough the demonstration of lateralisation.