TY - JOUR T1 - Ventromedial prefrontal cortex compression during concept learning JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/178145 SP - 178145 AU - Michael L. Mack AU - Alison R. Preston AU - Bradley C. Love Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/06/10/178145.abstract N2 - Prefrontal cortex (PFC) is thought to support the ability to focus on goal-relevant information by filtering out irrelevant information, a process akin to dimensionality reduction. Here, we test this dimensionality reduction hypothesis by combining a data-driven approach to characterizing the complexity of neural representation with a theoretically-supported computational model of learning. We find strong evidence of goal-directed dimensionality reduction within human ventromedial PFC during learning. Importantly, by using model predictions of each participant’s attentional strategies during learning, we find that that the degree of neural compression predicts an individual’s ability to selectively attend to concept-specific information. These findings suggest a domain-general mechanism of learning through compression in ventromedial PFC. ER -