Common features in plastic changes rather than constructed structures in recurrent neural network prefrontal cortex models

We have flexible control over our cognition depending on the context or surrounding environments. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) controls this cognitive flexibility; however, the detailed underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Recent developments in machine learning techniques have allowed simple recurrent neural network PFC models to perform human- or animal-like behavioral tasks. These systems allow us to acquire parameters, which we could not in biological experiments, for performing the tasks. We compared four models, in which a flexible cognition task, called context-dependent integration task, was performed; subsequently, we searched for common features. In all the models, we observed that high plastic synapses were concentrated in the small neuronal population and the more concentrated neuronal units contributed further to the performance. However, there were no common properties in the constructed structures. These results suggest that plastic changes can be more general and important to accomplish cognitive tasks than features of the constructed structures.