Developmental interactions between oscillatory and spontaneous neural activity support improvements in inhibitory control from adolescence into adulthood

In longitudinal EEG from 146 participants performing antisaccades, developmental decreases in broadband spontaneous activity during inhibitory response preparation are linked to reduced trial-to-trial response-latency variability.

• Why it matters: Cognitive control improves from adolescence to adulthood, but how maturation of spontaneous activity and frontal oscillations jointly supports more reliable inhibitory control remains unclear.
• What they did: Using 253 antisaccade sessions, the study tracked age-related changes in spontaneous activity and preparatory high-beta oscillations, testing links to response-latency variability and age-dependent suppression patterns.
• The result: Spontaneous activity decreased during inhibitory preparation and was associated with lower response-latency variability; additionally, performance-related broadband decreases tracked suppression of preparatory high-beta in an age-dependent manner, suggesting a mechanism for improved inhibitory control reliability.

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