Abstract
The lateral prefrontal cortex is involved in the integration of multiple types of information, including working memory and motor preparation. However, it is not known how downstream regions can extract one type of information without interference from the others present in the network. Here, we show that the lateral prefrontal cortex of non-human primates contains two minimally dependent low-dimensional subspaces: one that encodes working memory information, and another that encodes motor preparation information. These subspaces capture all the information about the target in the delay periods, and the information in both subspaces is reduced in error trials. A single population of neurons with mixed selectivity forms both subspaces, but the information is kept largely independent from each other. A bump attractor model with divisive normalization replicates the properties of the neural data. These results provide new insights into neural processing in prefrontal regions.
Highlights
Complex flexible behaviors require the integration of multiple types of information, including information about sensory properties, task rules, items held in memory, items being attended, actions being planned, and rewards being expected, among others
We demonstrate the existence of two independent information subspaces in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) network: one that encoded spatial working memory information, and another one that encoded movement preparation information
We previously reported that the presentation of the distractor led to code[61] morphing in the LPFC, such that a decoder trained in the delay period that preceded the distractor (Delay 1) could not be used to decode memory information during the delay period that followed the distractor (Delay 2), and vice versa[2] (Fig. 1b)
Summary
Complex flexible behaviors require the integration of multiple types of information, including information about sensory properties, task rules, items held in memory, items being attended, actions being planned, and rewards being expected, among others. A large proportion of neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) encode a mixture of two or more of these types of information[1,2,3,4,5]. We demonstrate the existence of two independent information subspaces in the LPFC network: one that encoded spatial working memory information, and another one that encoded movement preparation information. Both exhibited behavioral relevance with significantly decreased information in error trials only in the subspace, and not in the null space. We believe these results provide insights into the neural mechanisms of cognitive flexibility and 52 cognitive capacity
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