Abstract
The ability to switch between tasks is critical for animals to behave according to context. Although the association between the prefrontal cortex and task switching has been well documented, the ultimate modulation of sensory–motor associations has yet to be determined. Here, we modeled the results of a previous study showing that task switching can be accomplished by communication from distinct populations of sensory neurons. We proposed a leaky-integrator model where relevant and irrelevant information were stored separately in two integrators and task switching was achieved by leaking information from the irrelevant integrator. The model successfully explained both the behavioral and neuronal data. Additionally, the leaky-integrator model showed better performance than an alternative model, where irrelevant information was discarded by decreasing the weight on irrelevant information, when animals initially failed to commit to a task. Overall, we propose that flexible switching is, in part, achieved by actively controlling the amount of leak of relevant and irrelevant information.
Highlights
A crucial aspect of human cognitive flexibility is our ability to respond differently to identical sensory inputs depending on the task
During the direction-discrimination task, stimuli with an upward-motion component were associated with upward saccades, and those with a downward-motion component were associated with downward saccades
During the depth-discrimination task, stimuli having far disparity were associated with upward saccades, and those having near disparity were associated with downward saccades (Fig. 1A)
Summary
A crucial aspect of human cognitive flexibility is our ability to respond differently to identical sensory inputs depending on the task. Sasaki and Uka found that sensitivities of MT neurons were task independent, some of the neurons whose preferred direction and preferred depth were related to opposite choices in the two tasks (incongruent neurons) showed covariation with behavioral choices in either of the two tasks [5]. They suggested that sensory neurons are divided into distinct populations for each task and that task switching is accomplished by attending to information from task-relevant neurons and discarding information from task-irrelevant neurons
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