A domain-general basal ganglia mechanism for inhibitory control during language comprehension

In 20 humans, subthalamic nucleus activity in the 13–30 Hz beta band is linked to both linguistic and motor inhibition, with STN disruption impairing both.

• Why it matters: It addresses whether inhibitory control during language comprehension relies on domain-general circuits shared with motor inhibition or on language-specific mechanisms.
• What they did: Participants underwent intra- and extracranial neural field potential recordings and deep-brain stimulation while simultaneously engaging motor and linguistic inhibition; cross-decoding tested whether decoders generalize between domains.
• The result: Simultaneous inhibition increased behavioral cost, motor-trained decoders decoded linguistic inhibition and vice versa, STN beta-band activity rose for both, and STN stimulation disruption impaired both behavioral and neural signatures.

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