ArticleNature neuroscience2026
Learning shapes neural geometry in the primate prefrontal cortex.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Population-level encoding of task information is stronger in the adolescent compared to adult frontal cortex.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Granule cells reorient cortical manifolds to separate contexts but preserve their geometry.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Insight and executive functions in acquired brain injury: empirical evidence and theoretical frameworks.Frontiers in neurology · 2026Review
- Cognitive Maps in the Prefrontal Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Practice reshapes the geometry and dynamics of task-tailored representations.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Novel Verbal Instructions Recruit Abstract Neural Patterns of Time-Variable Information Dimensionality.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Task structure tailors the geometry of neural representations in human lateral prefrontal cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Practice Reshapes the Geometry and Dynamics of Task-tailored Representations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Dissociable Representations of Decision Variables within Subdivisions of the Macaque Orbital and Ventrolateral Frontal Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Building compositional tasks with shared neural subspaces.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Dissociable representations of decision variables within subdivisions of macaque orbitofrontal and ventrolateral frontal cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
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Abstract
The relationship between the geometry of neural representations and the task being performed is a central question in neuroscience. The primate prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a primary focus of inquiry, as it can encode information with geometries that either rely on past experience or are experience agnostic. One hypothesis is that PFC representations should evolve with learning, from a format that supports exploration of all possible task rules to a format that minimizes the encoding of task-irrelevant features and supports generalization. Here we test this idea by recording neural activity from the macaque PFC when learning a new rule ('XOR rule') from scratch. We show that PFC representations progress from being high dimensional, nonlinear and randomly mixed to low dimensional and rule selective. Upon generalizing the rule to new stimuli, these representations further evolve into an abstract, stimulus-invariant geometry. These findings reconcile previously conflicting accounts of PFC function by demonstrating how neural representations adapt across distinct stages of learning.
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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.