title: Sustained enhancements in inhibitory control depend primarily on the reinforcement of fronto-basal anatomical connectivity.
abstract: What are the neurophysiological determinants of sustained supra-normal inhibitory control performance? We addressed this question by coupling multimodal neuroimaging and behavioral investigations of experts in fencing who underwent more than 20,000 h of inhibitory control training over 15 years. The superior control of the experts manifested behaviorally as a speeding-up of inhibition processes during a Go/NoGo task and was accompanied by changes in bilateral inferior frontal white matter microstructure. In the expert group, inhibition performance correlated positively with the fractional anisotropy (FA) of white matter tracts projecting to the basal ganglia, and the total training load with the FA in supplementary motor areas. Critically, the experts showed no changes in grey matter volume or in the functional organization of the fronto-basal inhibitory control network. The fencers' performance and neural activity during a 2-back working memory task did not differ from those of the controls, ensuring that their expertise was specific to inhibitory control. Our results indicate that while phasic changes in the patterns of neural activity and grey matter architecture accompany inhibitory control improvement after short- to medium- term training, long-lasting inhibitory control improvements primarily depend on the reinforcement of fronto-basal structural connectivity.
authors.affiliation: Neurology Unit, Medicine Department, Faculty of Sciences, University of Fribourg, Chemin du Musée 5, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Camille
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chavan
authors.affiliation: Neurology Unit, Medicine Department, Faculty of Sciences, University of Fribourg, Chemin du Musée 5, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mouthon
authors.affiliation: Neurology Unit, Medicine Department, Faculty of Sciences, University of Fribourg, Chemin du Musée 5, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Simonet
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Cantonal Hospital of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Henri-Marcel
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Hoogewoud
authors.affiliation: LREN, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Vaudois Hospital University Center, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Bogdan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Draganski
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Imaging, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.|Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Wietske
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: van der Zwaag
authors.affiliation: Neurology Unit, Medicine Department, Faculty of Sciences, University of Fribourg, Chemin du Musée 5, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland. lucas.spierer@unifr.ch.
authors.forename: Lucas
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-3558-4408
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Spierer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D056324:Diffusion Tensor Imaging; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D066128:Gray Matter / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D066127:White Matter / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Inhibitory control; Plasticity; Tract-based spatial statistics; Training