UCSF

In novel situations, animals can leverage past experiences to learn rapidly. This ability is thought to depend on abstraction: the representation of the common structure across related experiences. In mammals, the hippocampus (HPc) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC), including its medial prefrontal (mPFC) and orbitofrontal (OFC) subregions, are thought to support abstraction by expressing neuronal firing patterns that represent generalized features of experiences. Whether these firing patterns reflect a single, distributed representation of generalized features of experience, or whether each area specializes to represent particular features at particular times, remains unknown. To address this, we continuously monitored large neural ensembles in the HPc, mPFC, and OFC of freely behaving rats performing a cognitive task. We found evidence for regional specialization in the coding of generalized task features. First, HPc firing patterns were consistent with a primarily route-based coding scheme, whereas mPFC and OFC firing patterns were organized around the act of traveling between goal locations and the specific actions required to reach goals. Second, task representations in mPFC and OFC were most reliable during distinct task phases, suggesting these areas specialize to express consistent task representations in distinct behavioral periods.