Inhibitory Control Elicited by Physical Activity and Inactivity Stimuli: An Electroencephalography Study

The theory of effort minimization in physical activity argues that individuals have an automatic attraction toward effort minimization. To engage in a physically active behavior, this automatic attraction needs to be overridden by controlled processes. However, direct evidence showing that inhibitory control is required to avoid effort minimization is lacking. Here, we used go/no-go tasks and electroencephalography to assess the neural correlates of inhibitory control associated with visual stimuli depicting physical inactivity or physical activity, or depicting control stimuli in 50 healthy young adults. The N2 event-related potential component amplitude was used as a physiological index of inhibitory control. Results showed significant two-way interactions between the type of trials (i.e., go vs. no-go trials) and the type of stimuli on N2, revealing a significantly more pronounced no-go effect (i.e., higher N2 in no-go relative to go trials) for control and physical inactivity stimuli compared with physical activity stimuli. Simple tests further revealed that N2 amplitude was more negative in no-go than go trials for control stimuli (b = -.91 mu V, 95% CI = -1.42 to -.40 mu V, p < .001) and for stimuli depicting physical inactivity (b = -.58 mu V, 95% CI = -1.08 to -.08 mu V, p = .025). By contrast, we found no evidence of significant differences in N2 amplitude between no-go and go trials for stimuli depicting physical activity (b = .20 mu V, 95% CI = -.31 to .70 mu V, p = .445). These findings suggest that inhibiting responses to physical inactivity stimuli requires significantly higher inhibitory control than inhibiting responses to physical activity stimuli.