Stopping and slowing manual and spoken responses: Similar oscillatory signatures recorded from the subthalamic nucleus

Response control in the forms of stopping and slowing responses is thought to be implemented by a frontal-subcortical network, which includes the subthalamic nucleus (STN). For manual control, stopping is linked to STN beta (13-30 Hz) and slowing responses are linked to lower frequencies (<12 Hz). Whether similar STN oscillatory activities are associated with the control of spoken responses is not clear. We studied 16 patients with STN LFP recordings during manual and vocal stop signal tasks in two experiments. We found increased beta activities for stopping spoken responses, similar to manual stopping. However, unlike manual stopping, stopping spoken responses elicited a right-lateralized beta power increase, which may be related to previously reported hyperactivity of right-sided motor control regions in stuttering. We additionally studied STN power changes associated with slowing responses in the same stop-signal tasks by comparing slower vs. faster go trials. Now, rather than beta, there was an alpha power increase after Go cues, which remained elevated only in slower Go trials in both the vocal and manual tasks. These data show that different types of response control are generalizable across effectors and relate to different frequencies recorded from the STN.