BMI EXTRAORDINARY SEMINAR // “Neural circuits supporting incentivized inhibition”

The ability to withhold responses under high stakes, or “incentivized inhibition,” is critical for impulse control. Previous research suggests that right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) is essential for motor inhibition, but less research has addressed how incentives influence this inhibition. By combining a novel task with diffusion-weighted and functional magnetic resonance imaging, we identified neural circuits that support incentivized inhibition. Behaviorally, high incentives increased responses to obtain money, but the same incentives decreased response inhibition. Structurally, individual differences in the coherence of a newly-characterized white-matter tract connecting the VLPFC and anterior insula (AIns) were positively associated with incentivized inhibition performance. Functionally, right VLPFC and AIns activity were positively associated with incentivized inhibition performance, and further, VLPFC activity mediated the association between tract coherence and incentivized inhibition performance. Together, these multimodal findings support a new account of how people inhibit actions when stakes are high.