Shifts in attention drive context-dependent subspace encoding in anterior cingulate cortex during decision making.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Attention selects percepts using external cues or internal goals.
• Neural mechanisms involve enhancing attended information and inhibiting distractors.
• Internal cue-based attention from conflicting stimuli remains poorly understood.

Approach:

• Recorded neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during an attention-shifting task in mice.
• Utilized analytical tools and a recurrent neural network (RNN) model to analyze neural representations.
• Compared ACC findings with previous studies in the primary visual cortex (V1).

Key Points:

• ACC neurons showed decreasing decodability of irrelevant stimuli, unlike V1.
• A RNN model revealed ACC's suitability for context-gated suppression via specific connection structures.
• Neural network predictions on contextual modulation correlated with neuronal responsiveness in ACC, but not V1.

Conclusions:

• The ACC employs low-dimensional neuronal subspaces to integrate stimulus information with internal cues.
• This mechanism facilitates context-gated suppression of irrelevant stimuli for action selection under conflict.
• Findings highlight distinct roles of ACC and V1 in attention and decision-making.