Shared and specialized coding across posterior cortical areas for dynamic navigation decisions

Animals adaptively integrate sensation, planning, and action to navigate toward goal locations in ever-chang-ing environments, but the functional organization of cortex supporting these processes remains unclear. We characterized encoding in approximately 90,000 neurons across the mouse posterior cortex during a virtual navigation task with rule switching. The encoding of task and behavioral variables was highly distributed across cortical areas but differed in magnitude, resulting in three spatial gradients for visual cue, spatial po-sition plus dynamics of choice formation, and locomotion, with peaks respectively in visual, retrosplenial, and parietal cortices. Surprisingly, the conjunctive encoding of these variables in single neurons was similar throughout the posterior cortex, creating high-dimensional representations in all areas instead of revealing computations specialized for each area. We propose that, for guiding navigation decisions, the posterior cor-tex operates in parallel rather than hierarchically, and collectively generates a state representation of the behavior and environment, with each area specialized in handling distinct information modalities.

Automated summary

This study examines the encoding patterns in the mouse posterior cortex during a virtual navigation task. The encoding of task and behavioral variables was found to be distributed across cortical areas, forming three spatial gradients. Surprisingly, the conjunctive encoding of these variables in single neurons was similar throughout the posterior cortex instead of being specialized for each area.