From a more cognitive standpoint, the neural networks that underly urge inhibition were assessed in TD patients with obsessive-compulsive symptoms during a task implying blink suppression while viewing emotional faces (i.e., angry and neutral; \cite{Bhikram2021}). The authors found that, compared to healthy controls, patients had a higher activity within the superior temporal gyrus and the middle cingulate cortex. In addition, by decomposing the task, they found that (1) tic severity was related to a higher activity during angry faces trials in comparison to neutral faces; (2) premonitory urge severity was related to a higher activity in the hippocampus, middle temporal gyrus, thalamus and caudate nucleus and that (3) blink inhibition was associated with a decreased activity in both the thalamus and the insular cortex.
Another fMRI study focused on decisional impulsivity by using a delay-discounting task (involving choosing between a small immediate reward or a more important delayed one; \cite{Atkinson-Clement2021}). While they found no abnormal decisions in patients in comparison to a group of healthy controls, the authors identified a subgroup of patients with higher impulsivity. This group was also characterized by a higher burden of impulse-control disorders and a higher level of general impulsivity. In this group, reward discounting was related to brain activity of a network comprising the orbito-frontal, cingulate, pre-supplementary motor area, temporal and insular cortices, as well as ventral striatum and hippocampus. However, the most interesting result was that a greater connectivity of pre-supplementary motor area with anterior insular cortex predicted both steeper reward discounting and more severe tics. This suggests a relation between cognitive (decision-making) and motor (tics) impulsivity in this subgroup of patients.