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Striatal GABA-MRS predicts response inhibition performance and its cortical electrophysiological correlates

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Abstract

Response inhibition processes are important for performance monitoring and are mediated via a network constituted by different cortical areas and basal ganglia nuclei. At the basal ganglia level, striatal GABAergic medium spiny neurons are known to be important for response selection, but the importance of the striatal GABAergic system for response inhibition processes remains elusive. Using a novel combination of behavior al, EEG and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) data, we examine the relevance of the striatal GABAergic system for response inhibition processes. The study shows that striatal GABA levels modulate the efficacy of response inhibition processes. Higher striatal GABA levels were related to better response inhibition performance. We show that striatal GABA modulate specific subprocesses of response inhibition related to pre-motor inhibitory processes through the modulation of neuronal synchronization processes. To our knowledge, this is the first study providing direct evidence for the relevance of the striatal GABAergic system for response inhibition functions and their cortical electrophysiological correlates in humans.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a Grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) BE4045/10-1 and 10-2. We thank Dr. Richard Edden for providing the GABA-editing MRS sequence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine of the TU Dresden, Schubertstrasse 42, 01309, Dresden, Germany

    Clara Quetscher & Christian Beste

  2. Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, Biopsychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Clara Quetscher, Ali Yildiz & Christian Beste

  3. School of Health Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA

    Shalmali Dharmadhikari & Ulrike Dydak

  4. Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, USA

    Shalmali Dharmadhikari & Ulrike Dydak

  5. Department of Neurology, Berufsgenossenschaftliche Kliniken Bergmannsheil, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Benjamin Glaubitz & Tobias Schmidt-Wilcke

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  1. Clara Quetscher
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  2. Ali Yildiz
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  3. Shalmali Dharmadhikari
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  4. Benjamin Glaubitz
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  6. Ulrike Dydak
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  7. Christian Beste
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Correspondence to Christian Beste.

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Quetscher, C., Yildiz, A., Dharmadhikari, S. et al. Striatal GABA-MRS predicts response inhibition performance and its cortical electrophysiological correlates. Brain Struct Funct 220, 3555–3564 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-014-0873-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-014-0873-y

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