preview

Inhibitory Control Essay

Better Essays

Often thoughts and actions that are not wanted appear, and we have the ability to suppress these in order to control our own behaviour to conform to social norms or achieve current goals. This is inhibitory control. There are many populations whose inhibitory control in impaired. This essay will explain the define inhibitory control . and how it has been measured previously. It will then go on to explore two populations which have been found to have impaired inhibitory control. Starting with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and then Tourette's Syndrome (TS), both populations of which have been found that the ability to inhibit motor responses differs from those in typical populations.

In psychology inhibitory control (IC) is defined as …show more content…

Firstly persistent obsessive thoughts affecting cognitive inhibition for example ‘If I flick this switch X amount of times , my house will burn down’ and secondly repetitive compulsive behaviour, affecting motor inhibition for example flicking the light switch X amount of times. OCD is thought to affect around 1 in 100 people although is is suspected that many do not report it. The compulsive behaviors are often stemmed from an attempt to stop the obsessive thoughts that a sufferer of OCD would have, it is aimed that by satisfying these thoughts will make them go away (Bannon, Gonsalvez, Croft & Boyce, 2002). In 2009 a study conducted by Page et al was conducted to test if sufferers of OCD exhibited deficits in cognitive and behavioral inhibitions compared to a control groups made up of sufferers of panic disorder. All participants had a clinical diagnosis of either disorder. It consisted of two tests, a Go/No go test (Fox, Michie, Wynne & Maybery, 2000) and consisted of four blocks plus a practice. Each block consisted of 100 stimuli, and participants were instructed to prace the spacebar when the go stimuli was presented two trials were with the right hand and two with the left. Go stimuli consisted of the letters ‘N’, ‘J’ and ‘W’ presented in blue or the letter ‘O’ in red, green or yellow. NoGo stimuli consisted of the letter ‘O’ in blue or the letter ‘E’ in Pink. The …show more content…

TS is distinguish by ‘tics’ which are automatic, unwanted and repetitive movements or vocal outburst that include gruntings, shouting words or body jerks. Similarly to OCD it affects around 1 in 100 people. It is linked to pathways in the frontal lobes, where IC is associated with, and the Basal Ganglia being dysfunctional and therefore resulting the activity in the basal ganglia which sends signals through the nervous system to move parts of the body. One thing to note with TS is that the tics can be inhibited however suppressing the is difficult for an individual that suffers with ts and their efforts to suppress their tics often fail. In 2004, Serrien conducted a study on motor inhibitions in sufferers of TS. the participants consisted of those that suffered with TS and a control group. The participants with TS took part in a clinical assessment in order to confirm and measure their TS. During all tasks in this study an EEG was taken and this is what was compared in the results.Participants took part in a Go/NoGo task as a way of measuring the control over motor inhibitions. During the task participants with TS were asked to try to control their tics. The Go/NoGo task consisted of two stimuli, either an arrow pointing left or right. There was a fixation cross in the middle of the screen and every time and arrow appeared on either side of the cross during the test. The

Get Access