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Poster A56 in Poster Session A - Tuesday, August 6, 2024, 4:15 – 6:15 pm, Johnson Ice Rink
Geometry of task representations in human frontal cortical neurons is predictive of task switch costs.
Daniel Deng1,4, Hristos Courellis1,4, Ivan Skelin2, Juri Minxha1,4, Taufik Valiante3, Adam Mamelak4, Ueli Rutishauser1,4; 1California Institute of Technology, 2University of Toronto, 3Toronto Western Hospital, 4Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
The neurophysiological mechanisms underlying task switch costs in humans remain elusive, particularly the irreducible cost that persists when given sufficient time to prepare following instructions. Two competing theories, reconfiguration and task-set inertia, provide differing accounts for the generation of switch costs, but without support from single-unit recordings. Here, we analyze the activity of large populations of single-neurons in the medial frontal cortex while neurosurgical patients are engaged in instructed task-switching. We demonstrate that task representations undergo reconfiguration on switch trials, and that inertia in the baseline representations of task context are predictive of upcoming switch costs, providing support for both theories.
Keywords: task switch costs neural representational geometry medial frontal cortex single neuron