RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Subspace partitioning in human prefrontal cortex resolves cognitive interference
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.11.16.516719
DO 10.1101/2022.11.16.516719
A1 Jan Weber
A1 Gabriela Iwama
A1 Anne-Kristin Solbakk
A1 Alejandro O. Blenkmann
A1 Pal G. Larsson
A1 Jugoslav Ivanovic
A1 Robert T. Knight
A1 Tor Endestad
A1 Randolph Helfrich
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/11/16/2022.11.16.516719.abstract
AB 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 co-existing 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.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.