Also known as behavioral inhibition, it is a psychological process in which routine, habitual or over-practised responses to a stimulus may be suppressed when such responses are at odds with a higher order goal. Different types of inhibitory control may be distinguished according to either the inhibited response (e.g., simple act or more complex responses such as speech) or the nature of inhibition (e.g., delay versus production of a conflicting sub-dominant response). As a system, inhibitory control is purported to respond to conditioned stimuli for punishment and non-reward, as well as to novelty and fear-inducing stimuli. Its output leads to the cessation of ongoing behavior, an increase in non-specific arousal, and the focusing of attention on relevant environmental cues. Its neural substrate is held to be septo-hippocampal system, together with its connections to the frontal cortex, while its functioning is dependent upon noradrenergic inputs from the locus coeruleus and serotonergic inputs from the raphe nucleus in the brain stem. The serotonergic pathways are perhaps those by which the behavioral activation system is inhibited.
See A-not-B task/error, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Brain stem, Delayed gratification, Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), Executive function (EF), Frontal cortex, Go/no-go task, Locus coeruleus (or ceruleus), Motor inhibition, Object reversal test, Noradrenergic neurotransmitter system, Prefrontal cortex (PFC), Raphe nuclei, Response inhibition tasks, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST)