Journal article
Cycles of goal silencing and reactivation underlie complex problem-solving in primate frontal and parietal cortex
- Abstract:
- While classic views proposed that working memory (WM) is mediated by sustained firing, recent evidence suggests a contribution of activity-silent states. Within WM, human neuroimaging studies suggest a switch between attentional foreground and background, with only the foregrounded item represented in active neural firing. To address this process at the cellular level, we recorded prefrontal (PFC) and posterior parietal (PPC) neurons in a complex problem-solving task, with monkeys searching for one or two target locations in a first cycle of trials, and retaining them for memory-guided revisits on subsequent cycles. When target locations were discovered, neither frontal nor parietal neurons showed sustained goal-location codes continuing into subsequent trials and cycles. Instead there were sequences of timely goal silencing and reactivation, and following reactivation, sustained states until behavioral response. With two target locations, goal representations in both regions showed evidence of transitions between foreground and background, but the PFC representation was more complete, extending beyond the current trial to include both past and future selections. In the absence of unbroken sustained codes, different neuronal states interact to support maintenance and retrieval of WM representations across successive trials.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 3.9MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-023-40676-1
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 14
- Article number:
- 5054
- Publication date:
- 2023-08-19
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-08-03
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1514273
- Local pid:
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pubs:1514273
- Deposit date:
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2023-08-23
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Watanabe et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © 2023, Springer Nature Limited. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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