Topic: Neural tuning

New tasks are often similar in structure to old ones. Animals that take advantage of such conserved or “abstract” task structures can master new tasks with minimal training. To understand the neural basis of this abstraction, we developed a novel behavioural paradigm for mice: the “ABCD” task, and recorded from their medial frontal neurons as they learned. Animals learned multiple tasks where they had to visit 4 rewarded locations on a spatial maze in sequence, which defined a sequence of four “task states” (ABCD). Tasks shared the same circular transition structure (… ABCDABCD …) but differed