CTN: Tim Buschman

Title: The geometry of cognitive flexibility

Abstract: Humans and animals are remarkably good at multi-tasking: we quickly learn many different tasks and flexibly switch between them. Theoretical work suggests such cognitive flexibility requires representing the current task and then using this task representation to selectively engage in task-relevant computations. In this talk, I will discuss recent research from my lab aimed at understanding the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive flexibility. I will discuss how tasks are represented in the brain and how new task representations can be learned. I will also discuss how the brain flexibly re-uses neural representations of sensory inputs and motor actions across different tasks. This allows the brain to compositionally construct complex tasks from simpler sub-tasks by routing task-relevant information between subspaces of neural activity.