Response inhibition in adults and teenagers: Spatiotemporal differences in the prefrontal cortex
Abstract
Inhibition is a core executive function reliant on the frontal lobes that shows protracted maturation through to adulthood. We investigated the spatiotemporal characteristics of response inhibition during a visual go/no-go task in 14 teenagers and 14 adults using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and a contrast between two no-go experimental conditions designed to eliminate a common confound in earlier studies comparing go with no-go trials. Source analyses were performed using an event-related beamformer algorithm with co-registered individual structural MRIs. Performance was controlled to be similar across subjects. Analyses of MEG data revealed bilateral prefrontal activity in the inhibitory condition for both age groups, but with different spatiotemporal patterns: around 300ms after stimulus onset in middle frontal gyri in teenagers vs. around 260ms in inferior frontal gyri in adults. Moreover, the inhibition of a prepotent motor response showed a stronger recruitment of the left hemisphere in teenagers than in adults and of the right hemisphere in adults than in teenagers. These findings provide high-resolution temporal and spatial information regarding response inhibition in adolescents compared to adults, independent of motor components and performance differences.
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Teenagers' ability for impulse control and other higher mental processes that may help resist the abrupt urge to commit a crime is not comparable to that of older adults.
“teenagers' ability for impulse control (Vidal et al., 2012) and other higher mental processes that may help one resist the abrupt urge to commit a crime is not comparable to that of older adults.”
From Transfer of Minors to Adult Court in California: Investigating the Legal/Demographic Factors that Make the Difference (2025) · cites this paper as Vidal et al., 2012
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“…responsible for reason and decision-making is not fully developed until the age of 25 (Kolb et al., 2012), teenagers ’ ability for impulse control (Vidal et al., 2012) and other higher mental processes that may help one resist the abrupt urge to commit a crime is not comparable to that of older…”
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“Right temporal regions, such as the right middle temporal gyrus, have been implicated in behavioral inhibition studies using the SST (Gan et al., 2014; Lenartowicz et al., 2011), and have further been found to be activated in inhibition studies using no-go trials (Vidal et al., 2012).”
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“Following several pretests in which various cognitive functions (such as mental flexibility or working memory updating) were compared, it was observed that mental motor inhibition, as required in tasks such as go no-go [24], was the most suitable cognitive function to integrate with the Corsi test.”
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“…are still developing, yet they ISSN 2522-6398 Vol. 9, Issue 6: 1-12, DOI: 10.25236/FER.2026.090601 Published by Francis Academic Press, UK -2- have received comparatively less attention in pronunciation research than either children or adults, highlighting a notable gap in the literature [10] .”
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- Authors
- Vidal, J., Mills, T., Pang, E. W., & Taylor, M. J.
- Affiliations
- Hospital for Sick Children (CA)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Taylor, Margot J.
- Venue
- Brain and Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2012-06
- Volume
- 79
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 49-59
- ISSN
- 0278-2626 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2061081463
- Cited by
- 61
- References
- 79
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 4
- FWCI
- 2.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Brain and Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research (81161_1)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Historical and Modern Theater Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Keywords
- response inhibition, prefrontal cortex, executive function, adolescence, brain maturation, go/no-go task, spatiotemporal dynamics, middle frontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, hemispheric lateralization, source localization
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Evoked Potentials, Female, Humans, Inhibition, Psychological, Functional Laterality, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Reaction Time, Magnetoencephalography, Prefrontal Cortex, Executive Function
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