Time-Invariant Working Memory Representations in the Presence of Code-Morphing in the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex

Abstract Endogenous processes allow the maintenance of working memories. These processes presumably involve prefrontal networks with strong recurrent connections. Distractors evoke a morphing of the population code, even when memories are stable. But it is unclear whether these dynamic population responses contain stable memory information. Here we show that dynamic prefrontal activity contains stable memory information, and the stability depends on parallel movement of trajectories associated with different memories in state space. We used an optimization algorithm to find a subspace with stable memory information. In correct trials the stability extended to periods that were not used to find the subspace, but in error trials the information and the stability were reduced. A bump attractor model was able to replicate these behaviors. The model provided predictions that could be confirmed with the neural data. We conclude that downstream regions could read memory information from a stable subspace.