FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY-DEPENDENT RESISTANCE TO REPRESENTATION DRIFT IN THE PRIMATE ANTERIOR CINGULATE CORTEX

The representation drift of neural encoding takes place at various spatial-temporal scales in various brain areas and artificial networks. However, how the drift been regulated remains largely unclear, particularly in primates.
Using ultraflexible electrode-based chronic wireless recordings in freely moving marmosets, we examined long-term task representations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). We found that the representations at single-cell, population, and atlas levels gradually changed over time. Analysis of functional connectivity revealed that higher connecting rate of single cell and denser connectivity of network structures were associated with lower level of representation drift.
Thus, the functional connectivity in the neural network serves critical roles in stabilizing neural representation which may shad light on synapses plasticity in brain and credit assignment in artificial networks.