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motor inhibition, selection efficiency, visual, distraction, heart-brain-interaction
Abstract:
It has been suggested that perception and action are affected by the interplay of exteroceptive and interoceptive processing. In the motor domain, studies have evidenced links between systolic baroreceptor firing and inhibition efficiency as well as deliberate execution. Yet, to perform in such paradigms exteroceptive relevant cues, for instance, stop-cues, need to be selected from irrelevant distracting information to perform efficiently. Interestingly, previous work in the field of perception hints to cardiac phase dependent fluctuations in sensitivity favouring diastole. Integrating that, we investigated how the temporal alignment of distracting visual information to different cardiac phases (systole vs. diastole) impacts upon motor inhibitory performance. We hypothesized that distractor signals moving at cardiac diastole would be cancelled out less efficiently with downstream effects on task performance.
Forty young, non-clincial adults participated in a stop-signal task in which they were to press a button after go-cue onset but to inhibit their response once a stop-signal followed the go- cue. Simultaneously, we presented several task-irrelevant dots on screen that were timed to move either at cardiac systole or diastole; as control, no distracting dots were shown in a third condition. EEG and ECG were recorded.
Behaviourally, participants were better at inhibiting their motor response in systole relative to diastole distractor trials. Electrophysiological evidence indicated that systole bound distractors were suppressed more effectively than diastole bound distractors. This led to elevated N2 amplitudes in response to the stop-signal as well as enhanced P2 amplitudes in response to error feedback on stop trials.
We highlight cardiac timing related fluctuations in selection efficiency of visual distracting information with subsequent detrimental effects on motor and feedback processing. Our findings hereby suggest that the relevance of a sensory input for given contextual affordances determines whether its temporal alignment with afferent cardiac feedback turns out to be beneficial or not.
