Applying Mental Brakes: An fmri Analysis of Prepotent Motor Response Suppression
Open Access
Author:
Manbeck, Alexandra B
Area of Honors:
Psychology
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Dr. Nancy Anne Coulter Dennis, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Jeffrey M Love, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
fMRI motor inhibition regression analysis brain-behavior relationship
Abstract:
The utilization of fMRI research has become essential in studying the regions of the brain responsible for motor inhibition. Despite the wealth of published research on the locations for motor inhibition control, little to no data describes how motor inhibition proficiency influences the activation within motor control regions. This study examines the effect of individual differences in inhibition proficiency on the neural regions activated during a Go/No-go task to investigate how individual motor inhibition skill correlates with increased or decreased neural activity. The results revealed five areas of the brain that show increased activation as individual performance improves, including the bilateral superior frontal gyrus and the bilateral middle frontal gyrus, regions known for their role in motor inhibition. In addition, the activity in the putamen, a region responsible for neural connectivity during motor inhibition, narrowly escaped threshold for increased activation (12 voxels). This information will contribute to the concept of the brain-behavior relationship of inhibition control.
