Neurophysiology of movement inhibition during full body reaching

Our current understanding of response inhibition comes from go/no-go studies that draw conclusions based on the overt movement of single limbs (i.e., a single finger pushing a button). In general, go/no-go paradigms have found that an individual’s ability to correctly inhibit the motor system is indicative of a healthy central nervous system. However, measuring inhibition by an overt behavioral response may lack the sensitivity to conclude whether the motor system is completely inhibited. Therefore, our goal was to use behavioral and neurophysiological measures to investigate inhibition of the motor system during a full-body reaching task. When directly comparing neurophysiological and behavioral measures, we found that neurophysiological measures were associated with a greater number of errors during no-go trials and faster onset times during go trials. Further analyses revealed a negative correlation between errors and onset times, such that the muscles that activated the earliest during go trials also had the greatest number of errors during no-go trials. Together, our observations show that the absence of an overt behavioral response does not always translate to total inhibition of the motor system.