Fig. 5: Temporally coordinated cue-trajectory ensemble pairs reactivate for similar features of previous experience.

a Cross-correlation coefficients over a ± 1 s window between the reactivation-strength time-course vectors of cue-trajectory ensemble pairs found within the same REST2 session. Out of 159 such pairs, 24 showed significant temporal coordination. These pairs were labelled as coupled, whereas the remaining non-interacting pairs were referred to as uncoupled. b Average correlation-coefficient over time lags for coupled cue-trajectory ensemble pairs. Shaded area denotes bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals. c Average time lag, weighted by the cross-correlation coefficient, between coupled pairs suggested a significant delay from the reactivation of cue ensembles to that of the trajectory ensembles (n = 24 coupled pairs; two-tailed Wilcoxon sign rank test for the null hypothesis of zero median; p = 0.0079). d We separate the ensemble pairs into three groups, based on the cue location that the cue ensemble was most strongly reactivating for (the last two cues were labelled under the same group due to their spatial proximity). The average reactivation strength of the associated trajectory ensembles as a function spatial location are illustrated in polar coordinate space. Qualitatively, the reactivated trajectory features tend to follow the associated cues more faithfully in the coupled pairs compared to the uncoupled pairs. e Pearson correlation coefficients between the reactivated cue and trajectory features in coupled and uncoupled pairs (\({{{{{{{\rm{atanh}}}}}}}}\)-tranformed for normality; for coupled pairs, at each cue from left to right, n = 7, 10, 7; for uncoupled pairs, n = 17, 44, 74). Coupled pairs expressed a greater degree of similarity in reactivated features than uncoupled pairs (two-way type II ANOVA with cue and temporal coupling as between factors; no significant interactions between factors; p = 0.2299; no effect of cue group on feature similarities; p = 0.1291; significant effect of temporal coupling on features similarity; p = 5.562 × 10⁻⁴; Shapiro’s normality test p = 0.2754; Levene’s equality of variances test; p = 0.1736). All box plots show the median (line), the first and last quartiles (box), the minimum and maximum values (whiskers) and the outliers (circles). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.