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Cited by 133Neural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesNeurotransmitter Receptor Influence on BehaviorNeurological disorders and treatments

A supramodal role of the basal ganglia in memory and motor inhibition: meta-analytic evidence

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Guo, Yuhua, Schmitz, Taylor W., Mur, Marieke, Ferreira, Catarina S., Anderson, Michael C.·2018·Neuropsychologia
DOI 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.11.033PMC PMC5759998
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Abstract

The ability to stop actions and thoughts is essential for goal-directed behaviour. Neuroimaging research has revealed that stopping actions and thoughts engage similar cortical mechanisms, including the ventro- and dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex. However, whether and how these abilities require similar subcortical mechanisms remains unexplored. Specifically of interest are the basal ganglia, subcortical structures long-known for their motor functions, but less so for their role in cognition. To investigate the potential common mechanisms in the basal ganglia underlying action and thought stopping, we conducted meta-analyses using fMRI data from the Go/No-Go, Stop-signal, and Think/No-Think tasks. All three tasks require active stopping of prepotent actions or thoughts. To localise basal ganglia activations, we performed high-resolution manual segmentations of striatal subregions. We found that all three tasks recovered clusters in the basal ganglia, although the specific localisation of these clusters differed. Although the Go/No-Go and Stop-signal tasks are often interchangeably used for measuring action stopping, their cluster locations in the basal ganglia did not significantly overlap. These different localised clusters suggest that the Go/No-Go and Stop-signal tasks may recruit distinct basal ganglia stopping processes, and therefore should not be treated equivalently. More importantly, the basal ganglia cluster recovered from the Think/No-Think task largely co-localised with that from the Stop-signal task, but not the Go/No-Go task, possibly indicating that the Think/No-Think and Stop-signal tasks share a common striatal circuitry involved in the cancellation of unwanted thoughts and actions. The greater similarity of the Think/No-Think task to the Stop-Signal rather than Go/No-Go task also was echoed at the cortical level, which revealed highly overlapping and largely right lateralized set of regions including the anterior DLPFC, VLPFC, Pre-SMA and ACC. Overall, we provide novel evidence suggesting not only that the basal ganglia are critical for thought stopping, but also that they are involved in specific stopping subprocesses that can be engaged by tasks in different domains. These findings raise the possibility that the basal ganglia may be part of a supramodal network responsible for stopping unwanted processes more broadly.

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  • Reduced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala supports their role in generating predictive errors.

    “while reduced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala support their role in generating predictive errors (Guo et al., 2018; Heckers, 2001; Laurens et al., 2003).”

    From Predictive coding in neuropsychiatric disorders: a systematic transdiagnostic review. (2025) · cites this paper as Guo et al., 2018

    The Results section on cortical activations reports shared anterior cingulate activation during memory inhibition and action cancellation, but does not link it to predictive errors. The Discussion addresses hippocampal interactions in memory tasks; searches for predictive errors and reduced activity in the three named regions found no passage supporting the attributed claim. Page numbers were not available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.76)

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  1. Levitt J.J. McCarley R.W. Ersner-Hershfield H. Salisbury D.F. Kikinis R. Jolesz F.A. Shenton M.E. An MRI study of caudate nucleus and lateral ventricle volume in first episode schizophrenia and affective psychosis Biol. Psychiatry 51 2002 59S 60S Elsevier Science Inc.: New York

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Authors
Guo, Y., Schmitz, T. W., Mur, M., Ferreira, C. S., & Anderson, M. C.
Affiliations
  • MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (GB)
  • University of Birmingham (GB)
Corresponding author
Guo, Yuhua
ORCID
Venue
Neuropsychologia
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2018-01
Volume
108
Pages
117-134
ISSN
0028-3932 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.11.033
PMC
PMC5759998
OpenAlex
W2774718880
Cited by
133
References
79
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 7
FWCI
1.19
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Neuropsychologia (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Scholarship@Western (Western University) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Scholarship@Western (Western University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • University of Birmingham Research Portal (University of Birmingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
UK Medical Research Council (MC-A060-5PR00)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Neurology › Neurological disorders and treatments
Keywords
basal ganglia, action stopping, thought stopping, motor inhibition, go/no-go task, stop-signal task, Think/No-Think task, striatal subregions, prefrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, supplementary motor area, intrusive thoughts
MeSH terms
Basal Ganglia, Humans, Inhibition, Psychological, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Memory, Motor Activity, Psychomotor Performance, Executive Function

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