Subspace partitioning in the human prefrontal cortex resolves cognitive interference

The human prefrontal cortex (PFC) constitutes the structural basis underlying flexible cognitive control, where mixed-selective neural populations encode multiple task features to guide subsequent behavior. The mechanisms by which the brain simultaneously encodes multiple task-relevant variables whi...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 120; no. 28; p. e2220523120
Main Authors Weber, Jan, Iwama, Gabriela, Solbakk, Anne-Kristin, Blenkmann, Alejandro O, Larsson, Pal G, Ivanovic, Jugoslav, Knight, Robert T, Endestad, Tor, Helfrich, Randolph
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 11.07.2023
The National Academy of Sciences
Subjects
Biological Sciences
Coding
Cognition
Cognitive ability
Humans
Interference
Neural coding
Partitioning
Prefrontal Cortex
cognitive control
prefrontal cortex
population geometry
intracranial EEG
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Summary:The human prefrontal cortex (PFC) constitutes the structural basis underlying flexible cognitive control, where mixed-selective neural populations encode multiple task features to guide subsequent behavior. The mechanisms by which the brain simultaneously encodes multiple task-relevant variables while minimizing interference from task-irrelevant features remain unknown. Leveraging intracranial recordings from the human PFC, we first demonstrate that competition between coexisting representations of past and present task variables incurs a behavioral switch cost. Our results reveal that this interference between past and present states in the PFC is resolved through coding partitioning into distinct low-dimensional neural states; thereby strongly attenuating behavioral switch costs. In sum, these findings uncover a fundamental coding mechanism that constitutes a central building block of flexible cognitive control.
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content type line 23
NFR/314925
Edited by Robert Desimone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; received December 2, 2022; accepted May 31, 2023
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2220523120