Figure 5. Neural trajectories encode task sequence.

Plots show trajectories of neural encoding projected into low-dimensional space, and are color-coded by the sequential task epochs shown in the inset. Several trials are superimposed, revealing that the patterns of neural activity are distinct for each epoch but are highly similar across trials of the same type. The trajectories diverge for trials requiring different effort (right panel), and the divergence begins well before the actual barrier traverse, which occurs in the green region, as seen by divergence of encoding in the central stem of the track (red region).