{"doi":"10.1016/j.neuron.2021.10.020","title":"Sequential and efficient neural-population coding of complex task information","abstract":"Recent work has highlighted that many types of variables are represented in each neocortical area. How can these many neural representations be organized together without interference and coherently maintained/updated through time? We recorded from excitatory neural populations in posterior cortices as mice performed a complex, dynamic task involving multiple interrelated variables. The neural encoding implied that highly correlated task variables were represented by less-correlated neural population modes, while pairs of neurons exhibited a spectrum of signal correlations. This finding relates to principles of efficient coding, but notably utilizes neural population modes as the encoding unit and suggests partial whitening of task-specific information where different variables are represented with different signal-to-noise levels. Remarkably, this encoding function was multiplexed with sequential neural dynamics yet reliably followed changes in task-variable correlations throughout the trial. We suggest that neural circuits can implement time-dependent encodings in a simple way using random sequential dynamics as a temporal scaffold.","journal":"Neuron","year":2021,"id":151828,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":80,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9416,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":645023,"name":"Adam S. Charles","orcid":"0000-0002-9045-3489","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":394897,"name":"Stephan Y. Thiberge","orcid":"0000-0002-6583-6613","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":394898,"name":"Carlos D. Brody","orcid":"0000-0002-4201-561X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89896,"name":"David W. Tank","orcid":"0000-0002-9423-4267","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":394896,"name":"Sue Ann Koay","orcid":"0000-0002-9648-2475","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":142,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:43:16.823357Z","pmid":"34776042","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}