Fig. 6: Persistently active cells remain active until the end of the delay period.

a Time cells were classified as persistently active cells when their activity persisted until the end of the delay period. Raster plot of an example cell that was persistently active in the treadmill-on condition during both delay intervals (left: 10 s delay; right: 30 s delay). b Raster plot of an example cell that was persistently active cell in the treadmill-on/10 s delay (left), but failed to classify as persistently active cell in the treadmill-on/30 s delay condition (right). c All persistently active cells, identified during the on/10 s delay condition and sorted by their peak firing times (left). The activity patterns for the same cells are shown in the corresponding order for the on/30 s delay condition (right). Blue, 0 Hz; red, each cell’s maximum rate within a condition. d Left to right: persistently active cells identified in the on/30 s delay, off/10 s delay and off/30 s delay conditions, sorted by their peak firing within each condition. Blue, 0 Hz; red, each cell’s maximum rate within a condition. e Left: for the treadmill-on condition, the average firing rates of persistently active cells in the 5-10 s interval were strongly correlated across the two different delay lengths (r = 0.812, n = 37 cells, p = 1.1 x 10^-7, Spearman’s correlation). Center and right: firing rates in the 5−10 s interval in the 10 s delay and in the 30 s delay were strongly correlated with firing rate in the 25–30 s interval in the 30 s delay (25−30 s; r = 0.83, n = 37 cells, p = 5.5 x 10^-8; r = 0.72, n = 21 cells, p = 3.9 x 10^-4, Spearman’s correlation). All statistical tests are two-sided without post-hoc adjustments for multiple comparisons. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.