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Deficits in inhibitory control and conflict resolution on cognitive and motor tasks in Parkinson’s disease

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Abstract

Recent imaging studies in healthy controls with a conditional stop signal reaction time (RT) task have implicated the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in response inhibition and the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) in conflict resolution. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by striatal dopamine deficiency and overactivity of the STN and underactivation of the pre-SMA during movement. We used the conditional stop signal RT task to investigate whether PD produced similar or dissociable effects on response initiation, response inhibition and response initiation under conflict. In addition, we also examined inhibition of prepotent responses on three cognitive tasks: the Stroop, random number generation and Hayling sentence completion. PD patients were impaired on the conditional stop signal reaction time task, with response initiation both in situations with or without conflict and response inhibition all being significantly delayed, and had significantly greater difficulty in suppressing prepotent or habitual responses on the Stroop, Hayling and random number generation tasks relative to controls. These results demonstrate the existence of a generalized inhibitory deficit in PD, which suggest that PD is a disorder of inhibition as well as activation and that in situations of conflict, executive control over responses is compromised.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all the participants. This work was supported by a PhD studentship from Fundación Caja Madrid (IO), a Career Development Fellowship from the Parkinson’s disease Society (LW) and a Royal Society Travelling Fellowship.

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  1. Leonora Wilkinson

    Present address: Brain Stimulation Unit, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Bethesda, MD, 20892-1430, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cognitive-Motor Neuroscience Group, Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, UCL Institute of Neurology, The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, 33 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK

    Ignacio Obeso, Leonora Wilkinson & Marjan Jahanshahi

  2. Movement Disorders and Neurophysiology Units, Centro Internacional de Restauración Neurológica (CIREN), La Habana, Cuba

    Enrique Casabona, Maria Luisa Bringas, Mario Álvarez, Lázaro Álvarez, Nancy Pavón & Raúl Macías

  3. Department of Neurology, Clínica Universitaria and Medical School of Navarra, Neuroscience Centre, CIMA, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

    Maria-Cruz Rodríguez-Oroz & Jose A. Obeso

  4. Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red Sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Instituto Carlos III, Ministerio de Investigación y Ciencias, Barcelona, Spain

    Maria-Cruz Rodríguez-Oroz & Jose A. Obeso

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  1. Ignacio Obeso
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Correspondence to Marjan Jahanshahi.

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Obeso, I., Wilkinson, L., Casabona, E. et al. Deficits in inhibitory control and conflict resolution on cognitive and motor tasks in Parkinson’s disease. Exp Brain Res 212, 371–384 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2736-6

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