Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Long-term learning transforms prefrontal cortex selectivity during working memory

View ORCID ProfileJacob A. Miller, View ORCID ProfileArielle Tambini, View ORCID ProfileAnastasia Kiyonaga, Mark D’Esposito
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.22.481537
Jacob A. Miller
1Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Jacob A. Miller
  • For correspondence: jacob_miller@berkeley.edu
Arielle Tambini
2Department of Neurobiology and Behavior & Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, University of California, Irvine
3Center for Biomedical Imaging and Neuromodulation, Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Arielle Tambini
Anastasia Kiyonaga
4Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Anastasia Kiyonaga
Mark D’Esposito
1Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley
5Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

The lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) is reliably active during working memory (WM) across human and animal models, but the role of lPFC in successful WM is under debate. For instance, non-human primate (NHP) electrophysiology research finds that lPFC circuitry stores WM representations. Human neuroimaging instead suggests that lPFC plays a control function over WM content that is stored in sensory cortices. These seemingly incompatible WM accounts are often confounded by differences in the amount of task training and stimulus exposure across studies (i.e., NHPs tend to be trained extensively). Here, we test the possibility that such long-term training may alter the role of lPFC in WM maintenance. We densely sampled WM-related activity across learning, in three human participants, using a longitudinal functional MRI (fMRI) protocol. Over three months, participants trained on (1) a serial reaction time (SRT) task, wherein complex fractal stimuli were embedded within probabilistic sequences, and (2) a delayed recognition task probing WM for trained or novel stimuli. Participants were scanned frequently throughout training, to track how WM activity patterns change with repeated stimulus exposure and long-term associative learning. WM task performance improved for trained (but not novel) fractals and, neurally, delay activity significantly increased in distributed lPFC voxels across learning. Pattern similarity analyses also found that item-level WM representations emerged within lPFC, but not in sensory cortices, and lPFC delay activity increasingly reflected sequence relationships from the SRT task, even though that information was task-irrelevant for WM. These findings demonstrate that human lPFC develops stimulus-selective WM responses with learning and WM representations are shaped by long-term experience. Influences from training and long-term memory may reconcile competing accounts of lPFC function during WM.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted February 23, 2022.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Long-term learning transforms prefrontal cortex selectivity during working memory
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Long-term learning transforms prefrontal cortex selectivity during working memory
Jacob A. Miller, Arielle Tambini, Anastasia Kiyonaga, Mark D’Esposito
bioRxiv 2022.02.22.481537; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.22.481537
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Long-term learning transforms prefrontal cortex selectivity during working memory
Jacob A. Miller, Arielle Tambini, Anastasia Kiyonaga, Mark D’Esposito
bioRxiv 2022.02.22.481537; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.22.481537

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (3600)
  • Biochemistry (7567)
  • Bioengineering (5518)
  • Bioinformatics (20781)
  • Biophysics (10325)
  • Cancer Biology (7977)
  • Cell Biology (11633)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (6602)
  • Ecology (10199)
  • Epidemiology (2065)
  • Evolutionary Biology (13607)
  • Genetics (9539)
  • Genomics (12844)
  • Immunology (7919)
  • Microbiology (19537)
  • Molecular Biology (7655)
  • Neuroscience (42064)
  • Paleontology (308)
  • Pathology (1257)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2201)
  • Physiology (3267)
  • Plant Biology (7037)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1294)
  • Synthetic Biology (1951)
  • Systems Biology (5426)
  • Zoology (1116)