Extended Data Fig. 3: Tuning properties of mFC neurons in the ABCDE task.

a) Polar plots of task-space tuning for 8 example neurons in the ABCDE task - neurons 1-4 are purely goal-progress tuned while neurons 5-8 are conjunctively goal-progress and state tuned. b) State neurons in the ABCDE task are predominantly goal progress tuned. Left: design of GLM to identify goal-progress tuned neurons in ABCDE tasks. Right pie chart showing the proportion of state-tuned neurons that are goal-progress tuned: ABCDE goal-progress/state GLM; Two proportions test: N = 189 state neurons, proportion goal-progress-tuned= 85%, z = 15.6, P = 0.0) c) Polar plots of task-space tuning for 3 example neurons recorded across 2 ABCD tasks and then two ABCDE tasks - neurons 1 is purely goal-progress tuned while neurons 2 and 3 are conjunctively goal-progress and state tuned. d) Goal progress tuning is maintained across abstract tasks ABCDE vs ABCD: The average firing rate vector of all neurons relative to an individual goal (from goal “n” to goal “n + 1”; averaged across all states). Animals experienced 2 ABCD tasks followed by 2 ABCDE tasks on these days. Each row represents a single neuron and the neurons are arranged on the y axis by their peak firing goal-progress in task 1 in the ABCD condition. This alignment is largely maintained in tasks across both ABCD and ABCDE structures. White dashes indicate early intermediate and late goal-progress-cutoffs. e) A histogram showing the mean goal-progress-vector correlation across tasks for each neuron. One-sample T-test (two-sided) against 0: N = 111 neurons; statistic=23.8; P = 3.76 × 10⁻⁴⁵, df = 110. Note that the neurons used in this panel are those on days where animals experienced both ABCDE and ABCD tasks. f) Left: design of GLM to identify whether neurons maintain their goal-progress tuning across ABCDE and ABCD tasks. Right: A histogram showing the mean regression coefficient values for goal-progress as a regressor across ABCD and ABCDE tasks for each neuron. One-sample T-test (two-sided) against 0: N = 111 neurons; statistic=7.43; P = 2.45 × 10⁻¹¹, df = 110. g) A plot of the mean task manifold derived from a Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP)-embedding along three dimensions for mFC activity in the ABCDE. The same manifold is shown twice: Left, goal-progress tuning along the manifold; right, state tuning along the same manifold. The entire task manifold is composed of goal-progress subloops. h) Quantifications of distances along the 3-dimensional UMAP-derived manifold - across different states and opposite goal-progress bin (left), across different states but for the same goal-progress bin (middle) or the distances across different states and same goal-progress bin for a permuted control. N = 4 double-days - T-tests (two-sided) (with bonferroni correction): Across-goal progress vs within goal-progress: statistic =6.64, P = 0.021, df = 3; Across-goal progress vs permuted control: statistic =21.1, P = 7.02 × 10⁻⁴, df = 3; Within goal-progress vs permuted control: statistic =10.7, P = 0.005, df = 3 All error bars represent the standard error of the mean.