ArticleeLife2022
The role of conjunctive representations in prioritizing and selecting planned actions.
Article in eLife, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Adaptive behavior is guided by integrated representations of controlled and non-controlled information.eLife · 2026Article
- Adaptive behavior is guided by integrated representations of controlled and non-controlled information.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neural and behavioral signatures of policy compression in cognitive control.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Practice reshapes the geometry and dynamics of task-tailored representations.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Sensory and motor contents are prioritized dynamically in working memory.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Neural and behavioral signatures of policy compression in cognitive control.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cognitive Control.Annual review of psychology · 2025Review
- Semantic Anchors Facilitate Task Encoding in Continual Learning.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- The representation of abstract goals in working memory is supported by task-congruent neural geometry.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- A transient high-dimensional geometry affords stable conjunctive subspaces for efficient action selection.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Practice Reshapes the Geometry and Dynamics of Task-tailored Representations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- A Transient High-dimensional Geometry Affords Stable Conjunctive Subspaces for Efficient Action Selection.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Flexible gating between subspaces in a neural network model of internally guided task switching.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Task switch costs scale with dissimilarity between task rules.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2024Article
- Flexible gating between subspaces in a neural network model of internally guided task switching.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Prospection of Potential Actions during Visual Working Memory Starts Early, Is Flexible, and Predicts Behavior.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Feature Integration in Motor Sequences: Implications for Abstract Task Sequence Studies.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
For flexible goal-directed behavior, prioritizing and selecting a specific action among multiple candidates are often important. Working memory has long been assumed to play a role in prioritization and planning, while bridging cross-temporal contingencies during action selection. However, studies of working memory have mostly focused on memory for single components of an action plan, such as a rule or a stimulus, rather than management of all of these elements during planning. Therefore, it is not known how post-encoding prioritization and selection operate on the entire profile of representations for prospective actions. Here, we assessed how such control processes unfold over action representations, highlighting the role of conjunctive representations that nonlinearly integrate task-relevant features during maintenance and prioritization of action plans. For each trial, participants prepared two independent rule-based actions simultaneously, then they were retro-cued to select one as their response. Prior to the start of the trial, one rule-based action was randomly assigned to be high priority by cueing that it was more likely to be tested. We found that both full action plans were maintained as conjunctive representations during action preparation, regardless of priority. However, during output selection, the conjunctive representation of the high-priority action plan was more enhanced and readily selected as an output. Furthermore, the strength of the high-priority conjunctive representation was associated with behavioral interference when the low-priority action was tested. Thus, multiple alternate upcoming actions were maintained as integrated representations and served as the target of post-encoding attentional selection mechanisms to prioritize and select an action from within working memory.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.