Rank signals in four areas of macaque frontal cortex during selection of actions and objects in serial order

Neurons in several areas of monkey frontal cortex exhibit ordinal position (rank) selectivity during the performance of serial order tasks. It has been unclear whether rank selectivity or the dependence of rank selectivity on task context varies across the areas of frontal cortex. To resolve this issue, we recorded from neurons in the supplementary motor area (SMA), presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA), supplementary eye field (SEF), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) as monkeys performed two oculomotor tasks, one requiring the selection of three actions in sequence and the other requiring the selection of three objects in sequence. We found that neurons representing all ranks were present in all areas. Only to a moderate degree did the prevalence and nature of rank selectivity vary from area to area. The two most prominent inter-area differences involved a lower prevalence of rank selectivity in the dlPFC than in the other areas and a higher proportion of neurons preferring late ranks in the SMA and SEF than in the other areas. Neurons in all four areas are rank generalists in the sense of favoring the same rank in both the serial action task and the serial object task.