| First Author | Koay SA | Year | 2022 |
| Journal | Neuron | Volume | 110 |
| Issue | 2 | Pages | 328-349.e11 |
| PubMed ID | 34776042 | Mgi Jnum | J:328607 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6877232 | Doi | 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.10.020 |
| Citation | Koay SA, et al. (2022) Sequential and efficient neural-population coding of complex task information. Neuron 110(2):328-349.e11 |
| abstractText | Recent work has highlighted that many types of variables are represented in each neocortical area. How can these many neural representations be organized together without interference and coherently maintained/updated through time? We recorded from excitatory neural populations in posterior cortices as mice performed a complex, dynamic task involving multiple interrelated variables. The neural encoding implied that highly correlated task variables were represented by less-correlated neural population modes, while pairs of neurons exhibited a spectrum of signal correlations. This finding relates to principles of efficient coding, but notably utilizes neural population modes as the encoding unit and suggests partial whitening of task-specific information where different variables are represented with different signal-to-noise levels. Remarkably, this encoding function was multiplexed with sequential neural dynamics yet reliably followed changes in task-variable correlations throughout the trial. We suggest that neural circuits can implement time-dependent encodings in a simple way using random sequential dynamics as a temporal scaffold. |
