Fig. 1
Experimental design and code-morphing. a Behavioral task: each trial began when the animal fixated on a fixation spot in the center of the screen. The animal was required to maintain fixation throughout the trial until the fixation spot disappeared. A target (red square) was presented for 300 ms followed by a 1000-ms delay period (Delay 1). A distractor (green square) was then presented for 300 ms in a random location that was different from the target location, and was followed by a second delay of 1000 ms (Delay 2). After Delay 2, the fixation spot disappeared, which was the Go cue for the animal to report, using an eye movement, the location of the target. b Heat map showing the cross-temporal population-decoding performance in the LPFC. White lines indicate target presentation (0–0.3 s) and distractor presentation (1.3–1.6 s). c Responses of the LPFC population when projected onto the first three principal components (PC) of the combined Delay 1 and Delay 2 response space. The responses for different target locations are color-coded using the color scheme shown in the top left. The trajectories illustrate the evolution of the responses from 500 ms before the end of Delay 1 (square), distractor onset (first triangle), distractor offset (second triangle), and the end of Delay 2 (circle). The trajectories of only four of the seven target locations are shown here for clarity
