Contributions of inhibitory mechanisms to unified theory in neuroscience and psychology

Findings from many areas of psychology and neuroscience indicate that inhibitory mechanisms may contribute to relationships between numerous causal variables and an equally diverse set of outcome variables. Outcome variables that implicate inhibition include measures from physiology, perception, attention, action, learning and episodic memory, semantic memory, emotion, and psychopathology. Inhibition-related causal variables include childhood development and aging, hypoxia and other brain insults, and socialization. If confirmed by further research, a theoretical framework with inhibition as one of its core mediating constructs has several strengths, including unified explanations for diverse relationships, mechanistic models for phenomena, insight into the principles that underlie observed relationships, and mechanistic translations of existing abstract, theoretical constructs. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.