Dynamic targeting enables domain-general inhibitory control over action and thought by the prefrontal cortex

Abstract

Successful self-control requires the ability to stop unwanted actions or thoughts. Stopping is regarded as a central function of inhibitory control, a mechanism enabling the suppression of diverse mental content, and strongly associated with the prefrontal cortex. A domain-general inhibitory control capacity, however, would require the region or regions implementing it to dynamically shift top-down inhibitory connectivity to diverse target regions in the brain. Here we show that stopping unwanted thoughts and stopping unwanted actions engage common regions in the right anterior dorsolateral and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and that both areas exhibit this dynamic targeting capacity. Within each region, pattern classifiers trained to distinguish stopping actions from making actions also could identify when people were suppressing their thoughts (and vice versa) and could predict which people successfully forgot thoughts after inhibition. Effective connectivity analysis revealed that both regions contributed to action and thought stopping, by dynamically shifting inhibitory connectivity to motor area M1 or to the hippocampus, depending on the goal, suppressing task-specific activity in those regions. These findings support the existence of a domain-general inhibitory control mechanism that contributes to self-control and establish dynamic inhibitory targeting as a key mechanism enabling these abilities.