Figure 1. Two views of neural representation.

A. Hypothetical joint activations of two neural populations to living and manmade items (left), and the classification plane that would best discriminate tools from mammals at different timepoints. Jointly the two populations always discriminate the categories, but the contribution of each population to classification changes over time so that the classification plane rotates. B. Independent correlations between each population’s activity and a binary category label (tool/mammal) for the same trajectories plotted above, shown across time for each population (left), averaged across the two populations (middle), and averaged over time for each population independently or for both populations (right). Independent correlations suggest conclusions about when and how semantic information is represented that are incorrect under the distributed and dynamic view.