Stop-signal task difficulty and the right inferior frontal gyrus

The stop-signal paradigm is increasingly being used as a probe of response inhibition in basic and clinical neuroimaging research. The critical feature of this task is that a cued response is countermanded by a secondary ‘stop-signal’ stimulus offset from the first by a ‘stop-signal delay’. Here we explored the role of task difficulty in the stop-signal task with the hypothesis that what is critical for successful inhibition is the time available for stopping, that we define as the difference between stop-signal onset and the expected response time (approximated by reaction time from previous trial). We also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how the time available for stopping affects activity in the putative right inferior frontal gyrus and presupplementary motor area (right IFG-preSMA) network that is known to support stopping. While undergoing fMRI scanning, participants performed a stop-signal variant where the time available for stopping was kept approximately constant across participants, which enabled us to compare how the time available for stopping affected stop-signal task difficulty both within and between subjects. Importantly, all behavioural and neuroimaging data were consistent with previous findings. We found that the time available for stopping distinguished successful from unsuccessful inhibition trials, was independent of stop-signal delay, and affected successful inhibition depending upon individual SSRT. We also found that right IFG and adjacent anterior insula were more strongly activated during more difficult stopping. These findings may have critical implications for stop-signal studies that compare different patient or other groups using fixed stop-signal delays.