Figure 11.
Neural coding of temporal information for different levels of behavioral variation. To test whether temporal information conveyed by mPFC neural activity was because of variations in the animal's ongoing behavior during sample intervals, performance of neural decoding was compared after dividing the behavioral sessions into quintiles according to the amount of temporal information (A, B, length classification; C, D, decoding elapsed time) conveyed by each or the whole set of three behavioral variables (X-position, Y-position, and displacement). Red, Results of neural decoding. Blue, Results of behavioral decoding. A, Probability of long classification (Plong) as a function of sample interval duration. B, Mean correct classifications (Pcorrect) as a function of behavioral variations. C, Decoded bin number versus actual bin number. The longest sample interval (4784 ms) was divided into 10 equal-duration bins and the order of the middle eight bins was decoded. D, Accuracy in decoding elapsed time (mean encoding error) as a function of behavioral variations. The error bars (SEM) are too small to see.