PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Luis M. Franco
AU  - Michael J. Goard
TI  - Differential Stability of Task Variable Representations in Retrosplenial Cortex
AID  - 10.1101/2022.10.19.512933
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.10.19.512933
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/10/21/2022.10.19.512933.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/10/21/2022.10.19.512933.full
AB  - Cortical neurons store information across different timescales, from seconds to years. Although information stability is variable across regions, it can vary within a region as well. Association areas are known to multiplex behaviorally relevant variables, but the stability of their representations is not well understood. Here, we longitudinally recorded the activity of neuronal populations in the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) during the performance of a context-choice association task. We found that the activity of neurons exhibits different levels of stability across days. Using linear classifiers, we quantified the stability of three task relevant variables. We find that RSC representations of context and trial outcome display higher stability than motor choice, both at the single cell and population levels. Together, our findings show an important characteristic of association areas, where diverse information is stored with varying levels of stability, maintaining an adequate balance between stability and flexibility to subserve behavioral demands.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.