Scientists discover how the brain maps complex behavior patterns

Researchers have identified excellent cellular mechanisms in the brain that allow mice to learn and deliver abstract behavior patterns in different situations.

In a new study published in nature, Oxford University scientists reveal how specialized neurons in the medial frontal cortex create psychological “maps” of task structures, allowing animals to immediately apply the learning patterns to entirely new situations. This discovery provides important insights into how the brain organizes complex behaviors and can change our understanding of learning, memory, and planning.

Map tasks without remembering every step

The study investigated how mice resolve target sequences that share infrastructure but differ in specific locations. Using a specially designed grid maze, the researchers trained mice to navigate with repeated “ABCD” sequences of four reward positions that changed between tasks but maintained the same abstraction pattern.

After several versions of this pattern, mice exhibited an impressive cognitive feat: they could immediately apply the learned structure to completely new situations without previous experience, which scientists call “zero shot reasoning.”

Cell activity reveals psychological map

The team used multi-unit silicon probes to record the activity of individual neurons in the medial frontal cortex, while mice performed these tasks. The results show that most neurons in this brain region track the progress of the target in a very consistent way, regardless of the target’s positioning or the specific pathway to reach the target.

These “target-process cells” function similarly to the position cell mapping physical space, but instead draw abstract progress through tasks. Crucially, these cells adjust their activity patterns (promote or compress their response) to accommodate different target distances, creating a flexible internal representation of task progress.

The researchers identified several key features of these neural maps:

• Most medial frontal neurons (74%) track relative progress towards their targets
• These cells maintain consistent target process adjustments on different tasks
• A subset of cells encodes memory of specific behavioral steps that are precisely “lagged”
• Cell activity predicts future actions consistent with abstract task structure

Future actions of memory buffer structure

Perhaps most fascinating is the discovery that these neurons form what researchers call “structural memory buffers,” a network of cells that encode the entire sequence of past and future behavioral steps.

Instead of simply remembering a list of visiting locations, the brain creates dynamic representations where different cells are emitted at specific points in the task sequence. This arrangement allows the brain to automatically calculate appropriate operations without the need for detailed sequence memory of specific locations.

The active patterns in these structured memory buffers reflect abstract task structures even during sleep, and these representations remain even in the absence of explicit task performance.

Meanings outside animal research

What makes this discovery particularly valuable is how it bridges two previous separate understandings of brain function: architecture formation (building abstract knowledge structures) and sequence memory (remembering specific steps). The researchers found that a single neural mechanism can handle both functions, resulting in a more unified understanding of how the brain organizes complex information.

This discovery may have profound implications for understanding how humans learn transferable skills and apply abstract knowledge to new situations. This may also help explain why some people are performing functions, planning, or adjusting their knowledge into a new environment.

The identified brain mechanisms function similar to programmable systems, and the brain does not need to create entirely new representations when faced with new scenarios that match familiar abstract structures. Instead, it reconfigures existing neural dynamics to accommodate new details while retaining the basic pattern.

The future direction of cognitive research

Although the current study focuses on mice on navigation space tasks, the researchers believe that this mechanism may apply to more complex cognitive activities in humans. The medial frontal cortex contains these targets-promoting cells, which are evolutionarily conserved in mammals and play a similar role in organizing targets in humans.

Can this difficulty in neural mechanisms explain some cognitive impairments? What happens to these structured memory buffer failures? How do we enhance learning by targeting this system? These issues remain open for future investigations.

With neuroscience’s understanding of how the brain organizes complex information, this cellular mapping mechanism provides a compelling new framework for understanding the significant ability of humans to learn abstraction patterns and flexibly apply them in different fields. By identifying the specific neural circuits that underpin these abilities, researchers are gradually pieced together the biological basis of abstract ideas.