Widespread coding of navigational variables in prefrontal cortex

Abstract

To navigate, we must represent information about our place in the environment. Traditional research highlights the role of the hippocampal complex in this process. Spurred by recent research highlighting the widespread cortical encoding of cognitive and motor variables previously thought to have localized function, we hypothesized that navigational variables would be likewise encoded widely, especially in the prefrontal cortex, which is often associated with control of volitional behavior. We recorded neural activity from six prefrontal structures while macaques performed a foraging task in an open enclosure. In all six regions, we found strong encoding of allocentric position, head direction, egocentric boundary distance, and linear and angular velocity. These encodings were not accounted for by distance or time to reward. Strength of coding of all variables increase along a ventral-to-dorsal gradient. Together these results argue that encoding of navigational variables is not localized to the hippocampal complex and support the hypothesis that navigation is continuous with other forms of flexible cognition in the service of action.

Prefrontal control of actions in freely moving macaques

“…Several observers have proposed that the prefrontal cortex is characterized by a ventralto-dorsal functional gradient in which information is transformed from abstract to concrete, and from conceptual to motor. Partially supporting this idea, we have shown stronger task (Maisson et al, 2021), navigational (Maisson et al, 2022), and action-specific (this paper) representations in more dorsal structures. However, we have not previously identified any variables that have stronger patterns of modulation in more ventral structures.…”

Neural timescales reflect behavioral demands in freely moving rhesus macaques

“…The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted March 28, 2023. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.27.534470 doi: bioRxiv preprint progressively stronger from ventral to dorsal areas (Maisson et al, 2022;Voloh et al, 2022), and hence potentially facilitated by longer temporal processing or integration windows as reflected by slower neural timescales. Our current timescale findings and the previous task variable encoding findings, match our previous work demonstrating that the hierarchy of neural timescales at rest in the medial PFC closely follows a ventro-dorsal functional hierarchy of the decodability of choicerelevant task variables -i.e., encoding of task related variables is stronger in areas with longer neural timescales (Maisson et al, 2021).…”

“…A detailed protocol of the pose acquisition, reconstruction preprocessing can be found in Voloh et al (2022) and Maisson et al, (2022).…”

A-SOiD, an active learning platform for expert-guided, data efficient discovery of behavior

“…A single housed monkey exploring the environment for 5 minutes. Monkey’s pose was generated by OpenMonkeyStudio [7] as seen in Maisson et al 2022 [48] and Voloh et al 2022 [49]. All research and animal care procedures were conducted in accordance with University of Minnesota Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approval and in accord with National Institutes of Health standards for the care and use of non-human primates.…”