{
  "abstract": "The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) occupies a central role in executive function including decision-making, rule learning and cognitive flexibility. Here, we investigated how mPFC populations represent the animal's progression along sequential task stages. Freely moving mice performed an odour-guided two-choice task requiring sensory sampling, action selection, navigation, and reward collection. Population activity in the mPFC formed sequences that evolved through cue sampling, movement towards the reward sites, and reward-related epochs. These sequences exhibited a shared temporal organization across trial types, pointing to a generalized encoding of task progress by prefrontal neurons. Artificial neural networks trained on the same task developed task-progress sequences, and experimentally disrupting task-progress tuning in these networks impaired learning efficiency. Our results indicate that mPFC activity organizes behavioural episodes along correlated trajectories and suggest that task-progress tuning offers an efficient solution for the encoding of task space during multi-stage behaviour.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Saarland University, Center for Integrative Physiology and Molecular Medicine, Homburg, Germany"
  ],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 3,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "O. Tarahi"
    },
    {
      "name": "K. Koshy"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "J.-F. Sauer"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f1z212qg5cecq.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.10.20.760165",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.20.760165v1.full",
  "id": "f1z212qg5cecq",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.20.760165v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "neuroscience"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2805|Memory and Neural Mechanisms"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7223093943",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.20.760165v1.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-20",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f1z212qg5cecq.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:28:52Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.10.20.760165",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.20.760165v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "biorxiv:neuroscience",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Generalized prefrontal task-progress sequences efficiently encode task structure",
  "title_text": "Generalized prefrontal task-progress sequences efficiently encode task structure",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:28:52Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f1z212qg5cecq",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}