
==== Front
bioRxiv
BIORXIV
bioRxiv
2692-8205
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

10.1101/2024.09.12.612718
preprint
1
Article
Practice Reshapes the Geometry and Dynamics of Task-tailored Representations
Kikumoto Atsushi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2179-2700

Shibata Kazuhisa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4183-3493

Nishio Takahiro
Badre David http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7538-6241

15 9 2024
2024.09.12.612718https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
http://biorxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/2024.09.12.612718
nihpp-2024.09.12.612718.pdf
Abstract

Extensive practice makes task performance more efficient and precise, leading to automaticity. However, theories of automaticity differ on which levels of task representations (e.g., low-level features, stimulus-response mappings, or high-level conjunctive memories of individual events) change with practice, despite predicting the same pattern of improvement (e.g., power law of practice). To resolve this controversy, we built on recent theoretical advances in understanding computations through neural population dynamics. Specifically, we hypothesized that practice optimizes the neural representational geometry of task representations to minimally separate the highest-level task contingencies needed for successful performance. This involves efficiently reaching conjunctive neural states that integrate task-critical features nonlinearly while abstracting over non-critical dimensions. To test this hypothesis, human participants (n = 40) engaged in extensive practice of a simple, context-dependent action selection task over 3 days while recording EEG. During initial rapid improvement in task performance, representations of the highest-level, context-specific conjunctions of task-features were enhanced as a function of the number of successful episodes. Crucially, only enhancement of these conjunctive representations, and not lower-order representations, predicted the power-law improvement in performance. Simultaneously, over sessions, these conjunctive neural states became more stable earlier in time and more aligned, abstracting over redundant task features, which correlated with offline performance gain in reducing switch costs. Thus, practice optimizes the dynamic representational geometry as task-tailored neural states that minimally tesselate the task space, taming their high-dimensionality.
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