Expanding the understanding of cognitive control: Action inhibition investigations

Everyday interaction with the environment requires to correctly/quickly suppress the behaviors that are no longer adapted. This inhibitory control capacity has been conceived as a crucial set of "high-level" cognitive control. In this, two assumptions are classically operated in cognitive psychology and neuroscience: 1) The (inhibitory) control is exerted on "lower-level" functions such as perception and action in a supramodal fashion. 2) Inhibition is engaged in the implementation of other cognitive control capacities, such as flexibility. Here we present behavioral, electrophysiological and clinical investigations that challenge these notions. This research argues for an interactionist consideration of inhibitory control to provide a complete (neural) model of cognitive control.