--- title: Flexible brain circuits can switch between different tasks description: MIT neuroscientists studying mice found the first evidence of flexible neural modules in the prefrontal cortex that can switch between storing sensory... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/flexible-brain-circuits-can-switch-between-different-tasks-goo6u8dmk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Flexible brain circuits can switch between different tasks | daily.dev og:description: MIT neuroscientists studying mice found the first evidence of flexible neural modules in the prefrontal cortex that can switch between storing sensory... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/flexible-brain-circuits-can-switch-between-different-tasks-goo6u8dmk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/goo6u8Dmk.png og:image:alt: Flexible brain circuits can switch between different tasks og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Flexible brain circuits can switch between different tasks **[MIT News](https://daily.dev/sources/mit)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary MIT neuroscientists studying mice found the first evidence of flexible neural modules in the prefrontal cortex that can switch between storing sensory information and action plans in working memory, rather than requiring dedicated circuits for each type of information. Researchers trained mice on a tone-comparison task and recorded thousands of neurons, finding that while parietal cortex neurons stored only sensory memory, prefrontal cortex neurons could repurpose themselves to hold either a sensory stimulus or a decision/action plan depending on the phase of the task. The findings support a theory of compositional cognition, where reusable circuit 'building blocks' are mixed and matched to generate flexible behavior, potentially explaining how a finite number of neurons supports unlimited cognitive tasks. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. 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