title: Dissociable roles of right inferior frontal cortex and anterior insula in inhibitory control: evidence from intrinsic and task-related functional parcellation, connectivity, and response profile analyses across multiple datasets.
abstract: The right inferior frontal cortex (rIFC) and the right anterior insula (rAI) have been implicated consistently in inhibitory control, but their differential roles are poorly understood. Here we use multiple quantitative techniques to dissociate the functional organization and roles of the rAI and rIFC. We first conducted a meta-analysis of 70 published inhibitory control studies to generate a commonly activated right fronto-opercular cortex volume of interest (VOI). We then segmented this VOI using two types of features: (1) intrinsic brain activity; and (2) stop-signal task-evoked hemodynamic response profiles. In both cases, segmentation algorithms identified two stable and distinct clusters encompassing the rAI and rIFC. The rAI and rIFC clusters exhibited several distinct functional characteristics. First, the rAI showed stronger intrinsic and task-evoked functional connectivity with the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas the rIFC had stronger intrinsic and task-evoked functional connectivity with dorsomedial prefrontal and lateral fronto-parietal cortices. Second, the rAI showed greater activation than the rIFC during Unsuccessful, but not Successful, Stop trials, and multivoxel response profiles in the rAI, but not the rIFC, accurately differentiated between Successful and Unsuccessful Stop trials. Third, activation in the rIFC, but not rAI, predicted individual differences in inhibitory control abilities. Crucially, these findings were replicated in two independent cohorts of human participants. Together, our findings provide novel quantitative evidence for the dissociable roles of the rAI and rIFC in inhibitory control. We suggest that the rAI is particularly important for detecting behaviorally salient events, whereas the rIFC is more involved in implementing inhibitory control.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and wdcai@stanford.edu menon@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: Weidong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and.
authors.forename: Srikanth
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ryali
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and.
authors.forename: Tianwen
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Neurobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06519.
authors.forename: Chiang-Shan R
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9393-1212
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and Program in Neuroscience, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, and wdcai@stanford.edu menon@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: Vinod
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Menon
mesh_terms: D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology
keywords: classification; cognitive control; response inhibition; stop-signal task; unsupervised learning